


Bring Him Home

by AboardAMoose



Series: The Mission [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Eventual Smut, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mpreg, Multiple Orgasms, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Overstimulation, Porn with Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnant Bucky Barnes, Top Steve Rogers, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, birth denial, graphic birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28095042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AboardAMoose/pseuds/AboardAMoose
Summary: Rescuing Bucky Barnes. Specifically, rescuing a very heavily pregnant Bucky Barnes.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: The Mission [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2200737
Comments: 47
Kudos: 227





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will be updating every Tuesday and Friday for the rest of the year. As a tonic to 2020.

“They’ve found him.” Natasha’s words crackled in Steve’s ear, and he found himself on his feet without realising he’d moved. The spatula he remembered holding just a moment before clattered against the edge of his frying pan, sending half-liquid eggs splattering against the splashback.

“Where?”

“Italy. Vicenza.”

“The Gendarmerie?” Surprise forced Steve’s world into full resolution once more. The stove was off, the eggs junked and he was halfway towards the go bag in the hall.

“Tell me about it. Sam’ll be with you in twenty, Clint and I ten after that. Tony’s in Brazil but he’s got JARVIS breaking into their files. He’ll fly over if we need him.”

“Thor?”

“MIA. Off world.”

“Bruce?”

The faint sound of Clint muttering sarcastically at electronics could just be detected through the phoneline, as Natasha calibrated how to respond to that. “You think this is a Code Green? That the Hulk is the way to go to deal with the combined strength of seven European military police forces?”

The straps of the duffle were wrapped around his knuckles, the shield was heavy within it, and it clattered as Steve’s forearm collided with the wall. The twee hanging key hook which had come with the house lifted into the air, jangling with the violence of the blow. “I’ve waited long enough to get him back Natasha. He’s not slipping through my fingers again. I’m not letting that happen.”

“And we’re not gonna let that happen either Cap.” Steve had heard Natasha’s dry humour, spat like darts, cutting like well-polished steel as she turned feats of athleticism that would make Olympic gymnasts weep with jealousy, all while cracking the necks of the world’s worst criminals like the avenging angel they always knew would come for them in the depths of their darkest nights. He had heard her husky, laughing, body swaying, the personification of temptation, delicious enough to cross a bloodpact for. He had heard promise a weeping man enough pain to make Death himself nauseous, all while sounding like she was granting mercy. He knew a warning when he heard it from her.

Now Natasha’s voice lowered, hushed. He knew she’d stepped away from the console, found a corner to spin her web in. “We’ll follow your play Cap. But you’re compromised on this one. There’s not a clown in this troop that doesn’t know that.”

“And you’re not just saying that because you’re compromised when it comes to Bruce?”

Silence. A crushing amount of it, laden with well-deserved judgement.

Before he could summon an apology from the roiling mess of his thoughts, Nat was back. “ETA twenty eight minutes.”

“Make it twenty.”

The line went dead.

-

In the fifteen minutes he had to wait before Sam winged his way onto the porch, Steve had learned all Google could tell him about the European Gendarmerie Force. A core of 900 members. A further 2,300 reinforcements on standby. A robust, rapidly deployable intervention force, trained to handle international terrorism and cross-border organised crime with a specialism in crisis management. The Winter Soldier counted as all three. Yet it listed only Afghan training programmes and earthquake relief as successes. Steve had seen fronts enough in his lifetime to see through this one.

Headquartered in Italy, a three day march from Azzano. In the last few moments of solitude he anticipated receiving for quite some time, Steve found himself back there. The pulse of adrenaline in his veins, powering him through the darkness. The footsteps that could be friend or foe. The stink of caged humanity, their pity and then… him. James Buchanan Barnes. Strapped and bound and alive against the odds. Waiting for him.

Of course it would be Italy.

That face had been all Steve had thought about for six months. As he’d hopped across the planet on the hunt for another glimpse of those slate grey eyes, be they as blank as on the bridge or as wide and baffled as they had been in the dark tunnels of their first HYDRA fortress. As he’d been dragged from mission to mission and from massacre to massacre. As he’d trailed his gaze down the bodies the Soldier had left broken, the captors and torturers he’d granted rapid, efficient deaths to far more generously than they deserved. And now Bucky was waiting for him again, in some maximum-security European jail, hemmed in by armed officers he’d see as enemies just as indiscriminately as he would any other military representative.

“Steve?”

At the sound of his name, called from a distance, he lurched forwards. He’d drifted. The chair he’d been hunched in bounced against the ground with the speed with which he vacated it.

“Sam.”

On his doorstep, the Falcon’s wings were tucking themselves into their backpack.

“You not suiting up?”

Steve glanced down at the tank top and cargo pants he spent his day in, barely sparing the cognitive power to take it in. “You planning to launch a full frontal assault on an international military force with 3,000 officers at their beck and call?”

Sam shrugged, plates clinking as he did so. “I’m not doing anything else this evening. Calendar’s free. Well. I thought about maybe volunteering at the library reading circle for kids. Helping some old ladies across the road. Maybe catch a movie. But your thing sounded okay too I guess.”

The words washed over Steve’s mind like mist, making featherlight contact and little more, certainly not being absorbed by the synapses he was sure had been there and functioning prior to Natasha’s call. Sam noticed. Because of course he did.

“Hey. You alright man?” A warm pressure squeezed Steve’s shoulder, the grip of someone who had followed him across the planet on the frigid, bloody trail of a man Steve had loved for a hundred years. The touch of a friend, grounding him when he need it. “He’s safe, Steve. Your boy is safe. We know where he is. He’s gonna be eating pasta and calling the guards bella. And you’re going to see him again. And before you know it, he’ll be home.”

Every insecurity Steve possessed wanted to argue. How could Bucky be safe in a cell? How could Sam know they’d be successful? Even if they got him home, what state would he be in? The list of medical conditions they theorised were affecting him, in their grimmer moments, was longer than Steve’s aged 12. But he tightened his jaw and nodded. The electronic whine of the Quinjet was approaching detectable range. “You bet we are. Let’s go.” He shouldered his bag, slammed the door closed, and jogged across the lawn to where Clint was manoeuvring their transport.

-

“Tell me what we know.”

“Hello to you too Cap,” retorted Tony’s hologram, hovering blue, translucent and grinning above the table that acted as their war room when in flight.

“Yeah, probably not the time for that tin can,” Sam commented, swinging the muscled thighs he was extremely proud of down into the seat next to Steve. Natasha perched on the armrest of her chair.

“Sure, sure, sure. Emotions swinging everywhere, feelings spraying all over the room, I got it,” Tony chattered.

“Tony.” Natasha’s glare bounced through half a dozen satellites to skewer the billionaire and he hurriedly flicked screens up into existence. They scrolled with text far too fast to read, and she smoothly took over the briefing. “Your boy’s today’s hot topic for the Western World’s security services. Headline news. There’s quite the chatter on the wires and everyone wants a piece of him. 28 nations have sent pre-notification of extradition requests, half the European Union, Moscow, Israel, Turkey, Ukraine and – of course – the good ol’ US of A. About three times that number are demanding the right to interrogate him, citing crimes on their soil. Then there’s the UN and NATO scrambling urgent debates, and it’s only a matter of time before the folks at the Hague want a word.”

JARVIS helpfully colour-coded a map and sent it bobbing above the empty seat at the table. Half the planet glowed, amber, purple, red. He’d even created some convenient bubbles that floated above the globe to represent the multi-lateral agencies, in case they should forget.

“Any of them getting anywhere?” asked Steve.

“Noope.”

“They’ll delay for as long as possible,” Tony interjected, no doubt having congratulated himself for being so well behaved to date. “Classic diplomatic technique. Put off the problems until they go away.”

“God only knows how that’d be your first thought,” hollered Clint from the cockpit.

“Presumably the Italians have their own axe to grind with him too?” asked Steve.

“Yep,” Natasha responded, popping her plosives. “And that’s where things get a little bit more informative.”

A new screen resolved itself upon the table, and Natasha flicked it to a larger size, stabbing the relevant line with a forefinger.

“Denied on medical grounds” Sam read aloud, squinting at the response to authorities in Milan.

“He’s hurt? Or sick?” demanded Steve.

“How else do you bring in the Winter Solider?” Natasha’s face was grim.

Steve flicked his eyes back up to the revolving blue pixels that constituted the virtual presence of the second Stark. “I want eyes on the inside Tony. JARVIS. We need to know what’s going on with him.”

“Sir yes sir.” A single salute, and the hollow blue light disappeared.

-

Steve paced. He prowled the small space, circling the loading bay as the jet streamed across the Atlantic, eating up the miles close to the speed of sound and still far too slowly. He knew sharp eyes watched him. Natasha propped herself up against crates of tech and medi-kits as they flew into a scarlet sunset. “I said I’d follow your play on this Cap.”

“You changing your mind?” Steve bit back.

Not a beat passed before Natasha returned fire. “Absolutely not. But the guys need a steer if you want them to plan. Do you want us to sneak and grab? Storm the keep? Try the diplomatic routes?”

Steve snorted. “If the UN can’t get the Europeans on the phone, I’m not likely to be more successful. And I don’t like the numbers game. You and Clint are going to have to take point on this one. In and out, minimum disturbance, minimum disruption, minimum casualties, maximum running away very fast probably across several borders.”

“Alright. That we can do.” She nodded, ideas sparking behind her eyes. “Do you wanna come see the city layout JARVIS has rendered? Or are the grooves in the floor an important part of your process?”

She was baiting him, needing to know just how deeply buried in his own head he was. Steve flicked a smile into place, lighting the room just as he had the theatres once upon a time. “I thought it was the thing you spies do. Wear out your shoes until you can feel the cobblestones through the soles?”

“Yeah, believe that and I’ve got a bridge to sell you.” She nodded towards the table. “C’mon. They’re ready to brief on surveillance.”

“Right.” With a clap of his hands, forcing a spring into his step, fooling approximately zero members of the gathered squad of spies, soldiers, savants and software, Steve strode towards the table. “What’s the plan?”

-

The headquarters of the European Gendarmerie Force appeared unremarkable enough. Four sunshine yellow buildings surrounding a concrete courtyard. Two more, four stories high, to the West and the South. Additionaly sheds, warehouses and generators to the East. Street-level windows lay dark and thick metal shutters dropped low on anything higher. Then there were the twenty-foot breezeblock walls and the watchtowers on every corner, all still painted with buttery colour as if a schoolchild might begin sketching pastel pink rabbits in chalk upon its surface at any moment.

From their vantage point in the rafters of a church opposite the compound, scopes trained through carefully bored holes in stained glass panels, the gathered Avengers watched the steady dribble of officers through the gates, each one bearing one of the seven nations’ insignia stitched upon their shoulders.

“These people don’t want visitors,” muttered Clint.

“Neither do you, as memory serves,” Sam responded. “That having-people-over-for-dinner ratio is getting awfully one sided.”

“It’s that courtyard that’s bugging me. This is a big complex, in a crowded town. They’ve built high. A thousand people. No way they’re wasting that space if they don’t have to.” Steve’s gaze flicked from aluminium shade to aluminium shade, as if at any time the building might wink at him and reveal its secrets. “He could be anywhere in there.”

It had been three days. Three days of sweating in the Mediterranean heat. Three days of breathing in incense-tinged dust and each other’s odours, and wondering if James Barnes was going to be too hurt to stagger out with them. Three days of stabbing pins into maps, headshots and biographies. Three days of debating the benefits of stealing officers’ uniforms over contractors', day over night, aerial assault over subterranean. “Where is Tony with those blueprints? I need to see the rest of this building. The Europeans love CCTV, how are we not inside their cameras yet?” Steve grouched for the eighteenth time that morning.

With a groan, Sam rolled away, dragging himself on his elbows over to where Natasha was sat, cross-legged, before a screen. The laptop rested upon a stack of aging Bibles, and the dim space was illuminated by an Advent candle. Crowding beside the assassin, Sam waved at the grimacing form of Tony Stark. They all knew precisely how little he had slept over those three days, despite his Hawaain shirt and vacation vibes. The bags under his eyes were dark as storm clouds.

“Our fearless Leader’s getting restless. What’ve you got for us Tony?”

“D’you think if I had something I’d keep shtum? Hold it for a special occasion? Deliver it to the Immaculate Heart with roses and candy-flavoured condoms, care of the Padre?” The span of the camera allowed them to see the thump of Tony’s fist against the table. “I can’t crack this system. I can’t be the only one trying, and they’re throwing wall after wall up against us. Cap’s right. IR shows people below the courtyard. This place has levels well into the Earth, but I can’t tell you which of these shiny red dots on my screen is your metal murderer.”

JARVIS’ calming, conciliatory voice floated over the speakers. “There are nineteen individuals Stark satellites have detected whose heat signatures have remained broadly stationary in the time we’ve been monitoring these premises. These individuals are in clusters, spread across four locations within the complex. Three of those locations are underground and one is in the Northern building on the top floor. If Sergeant Barnes is still being held, and none of those nineteen individuals have departed the complex so we can assume with moderate confidence that is the case, he is one of these nineteen individuals.”

Sam was shaking his head even as JARVIS raised doubt about Bucky’s ongoing position, the kind of doubt Steve had no need to hear. “That’s way too many. We can’t stretch ourselves that thin, not without proper recon.”

“We’d be able to stretch ourselves further if there were more of us,” Natasha said pointedly. Palm trees swayed behind Tony’s head, while Pepper - stretched out beneath a sun umbrella - sipped at a cocktail. Natasha could almost taste the mango and rum, swirling the phantom crushed ice over her tongue.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m notorious for my sneakability. I’m stealthalicious. You thought I was covetous, I think you’ll find covertness is, in fact, my middle – oh hello.”

“Have you got something?”

Electricity crackled through the attic room. Only Clint stayed in his place.

The jolt found Tony in Salvador too, the man suddenly pitched forwards in his seat, eyes jumping urgently from screen to screen. Distracted, the millionaire explained, “I’ve been scanning the cameras in the surrounding provinces, running facial recognition, trying to catch a glimpse of him. And it appeeears-” A new screen fluttered into life in the dark “-There’s our brainwashed international Gavrilo Princip.”

Three heads, one ginger, one black, one blond, crowded together before the screen. It looked like a market town, leaning stone homes narrow and cluttered. The SUV was jammed into a vine-filled courtyard, taking up the majority of the camera’s grainy view. But there, just for a few moments, was a crowd of bodies, suits, Kevlar, helmets, hustling the man they were seeking out of the building and into the truck. James Buchanan Barnes looked straight up at the camera, wide-eyed, haggard. As he did so, the crowd of bodies cleared, arranging themselves in such a way that there was a direct line of sight between the lens and Bucky.

“Freeze it,” snapped Steve. JARVIS responded within a nanosecond, the frame stilling.

“Is that…” Natasha started.

“Shit,” Sam hissed. “I think…”

“Ah,” Tony offered.

Bucky’s shoulders were hunched. His hair fell lank in his eyes. His wrists were bound behind his back. There was no fight left in him, and his posture screamed defeat. There was no trace of the Soldier. It was one hundred percent Brooklyn’s finest.

But it wasn’t that which drew the eye. It was Bucky’s stomach that forcibly demanded their attention. A swollen, distended form. A bulge, huge, and riding low on his hips. Bucky Barnes was pregnant, and heavily so.

“Steve…”

There was the sound of ripping paper from the wall on which they’d mapped the hierarchy of the EGF, then Steve and the organogram of EGF top brass were gone.

“He’s right. We should have brought Bruce.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Name?” The receptionist spoke in heavily accented English, hardly glancing up from her computer screen as Steve approached her. As if men like him were an everyday occurrence in her lobby. Men hardly holding it together beneath the veneer of the mission. Men with purpose burnishing their skin and glazing their eyes. Men finally able to see the end of the fucking line.

Men who could still state “Captain Steve Rogers, ma’am,” in a perfectly level tone because manners drilled into a soul of the 1920s didn’t cease to have value just because the world was spinning into countless, glistening shards of shattered reality and reforming into something new and impossibly bright with hope yet still forged of the blackness of murdered men’s souls.

“To see?” The boredom dripped from the two syllables.

“Commander Van Schie.” The organogram lay crushed in a bin outside.

“Do you have an appointment? I don’t see anyone of your name listed on the system.”

Suppressing his impatience took a physical effort. It bubbled and fizzed inside him, like a living thing. Yet the only living thing Steve could allow himself to be was a tree. It was his duty to plant himself in the lobby of the European Gendarmerie Force, growing roots so deep he would crack their foundations, curl around their mains and squeeze the vitality from their core before he swayed from his focus. “Ma’am. I’m Captain Steve Rogers, alias Captain America. Please tell Commander Van Schie’s office I am here to see her as a matter of urgency. She has one of my men in her custody and will see me to discuss it.”

It would appear the mythos of the original American superhero had failed to sufficiently penetrate Mediterranean culture. That, or the receptionist was excessively inured to over-promoted military egos traipsing through the door demanding this and that. Either way, she had zero visible reaction to Steve’s moniker. She merely sighed and picked up the phone.

A good eighteen minutes later, Steve had adjusted his position only to create room for another pair of visitors making their way through the system – a pair of visitors who sat more meekly upon the folding maroon seats at the edge of the wall to await collection. The receptionist clattered away at her computer, unaffected by his stance from the moment she had hung up on the Commander’s office and confirmed someone would be down to speak with him.

The clock was edging near to noon when a somewhat spindly man in the coal black uniform of the Gendarmerie and the embroidery of a French officer upon his shoulders stepped smartly into the reception and saluted. “Captain.” For a moment, it sounded like Jacques.

Beneath a vivid blue beret, an earnest face peered up at Steve, eyes wide and a little awed with recognition. Steve knew that expression. The officer’s smartly pressed black uniform, shining silver lapels and shoes you could see not just your face but every wrinkle and smile line in made Steve momentarily conscious of the perspiration-stained, grainy wifebeater and combats he’d been wearing for two days.

“Lieutenant.”

“I’m to escort you to the Commander, sir. It is fortunate she has been able to clear a window in her calendar.”

“I’m grateful.”

“Could I ask you to surrender any weapons to Ana please?” The boy was too professional to sound apologetic for asking an allied superior officer to disarm.

Steve gestured down at himself. His knees were almost grey from kneeling in the cramped church’s eaves, and his pockets entirely empty. Not a comms device, not a phone, not a rail ticket. “I’m not carrying son.” He was here to do this the old-fashioned way.

-

Commander Van Schie was stood rigid beside a large walnut desk when Steve strode into her top floor office, awaiting his arrival from an upright position of power, balanced on slightly raised, sensible pumps. Grey hair sheered short and severe framed a face chiseled and sharp, inlaid with a gaze as piercing as Peggy’s once had been. Yet Peggy’s lips had been full and scarlet, ready to twist into a crimson and pearl grin or drop into a garnet scowl. The only colour on this woman’s body appeared piped across her cuffs and collar, a stark red line against the pitch-black cloth. What Bucky must have thought when he was dragged before her, whose hands he must have believed himself to have returned to…

That thought had to be bottled up and placed on a shelf alongside a thousand thousand other repressed horrors. “Commander Van Schie.”

“Captain Rogers. I have over fifty governments and agencies clogging up my inbox and hammering my phone lines. A greater number of Foreign Ministers and Ambassadors are currently interested in speaking to the Dutch than have cared for our purposes in the last forty years.” She raised one faint, monochrome eyebrow. “I should perhaps not be surprised that you are the first representative to show up in person. Yet now I begin to fear you may not be the last.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, I’m not here as a representative. I’m here as Sergeant James Barnes’ commanding officer at the time of his capture.”

A squint of confusion creased dark, aged eyes. “Sergeant Barnes? We may be speaking at cross-purposes here.”

Steve nodded. “Forgive me. I understand the confusion. The man you have in your custody, the man you no doubt brought in as the Winter Solider, is in fact Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. He was wrongfully declared killed in action in 1945 when he was captured by Soviet forces. You have an American prisoner of war in your custody, a POW who served in the Second World War where he was part of a special forces unit that destroying two dozen Nazi and HYDRA bases. A hero who helped liberate Dutch and Italian cities. The Avengers have been on his trail for some time, in an effort to retrieve and rescue him from his current captors. Ma’am, the man you’re about to hand over to NATO as the Winter Soldier was never discharged. He is a member of American armed service personnel. A ranking Sergeant of a nation allied to every one you represent, of a founding member of NATO and permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. A prisoner of war in need of urgent medical attention, and the only man who has waited to get home longer than me.”

Sentence by sentence, Commander Van Schie’s eyebrows inched towards her hairline. “And the Winter Soldier?”

Steve had been expecting the question and threw his dice one more time. “The Winter Soldier is fearless, unstoppable, ruthless. He’s bested me twice. How many of your officers were injured in the struggle that led to Sergeant Barnes’ arrest?”

“None.”

“The Winter Soldier is the iron first of HYDRA. Their most brutal weapon. Yet two HYDRA bases in this region have been wiped out in the last two months and stripped of their assets, one in Porto Viro and one in Tolmezzo. You can’t have brought Barnes in without tracking him, where has he been?”

With a heavy sigh, the Commander lowered herself into the chair behind her expansive desk. Leather and metal squeaked. “I don’t even know where the paperwork for something like this begins.”

Steve shifted on the balls of his feet, as if transitioning out of parade rest, though the need to act, to run, to fight, to tear down the walls between him and Bucky fizzed up and down his spine. “On the topic of paperwork, I have to ask - what medical attention has he received? We believe it is likely that Sergeant Barnes is suffering from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder as well as dissociative identity disorder as a result of the treatment he has received. He is also in the last trimester of a high risk pregnancy, which is almost certainly the product of a rape by his captors.” Saying it made it real. It was out there, in the world, the words, the act that – Steve could feel the indomitable force of his fury boiling up within him, and knew he was close to spitting every consonant into the air.

The pallor of Commander Van Schie’s face was becoming alarming.

Choosing not to wait for the answer to a question he already knew, Steve pressed his advantage. “Sergeant Barnes has been out in the cold for a long time ma’am. Every nation that partakes in this organisation owes him an unpayable debt. With all due respect ma’am, I don’t care where the paperwork starts. It’s time to put this right.”

The confession was drawn out of her like spidersilk. “He doesn’t always speak. But when he does, he’s been asking for a Steve.”

“Please let me see him Commander.”

-

The basement deep beneath the courtyard of the European Gendarmerie Force complex went far into the Earth, further even than Steve had hypothecated. It was dark, because of course it was. But it was clean, the tunnel clinical, tiled and stinking of cleaning fluid.

Not so the room Bucky was held in. Even before he stepped inside, Steve could smell the fug of stale sweat, emanating from beyond the small, barred window which revealed little else. The cologne of the guard staged outside was overpoweringly strong in response.

“Commander’s orders Aspirante,” trilled Lieutenant Decoux, who had appeared delighted at the prospect of acting as Captain America’s chaperone for the afternoon and had veritably bounced alongside him through the corridors. “Open up. He’s to be let inside.”

That’s all it took. A snap of the fingers, and the door opened into darkness.

Inside, the figure on the bed was still. Only Steve’s enhanced sight allowed him to see the steady, shallow rise and fall of the man within’s chest, and the bulge of his stomach, rippling, along for the ride. God, what had they done to him?

Cautious, voice pitched low and not quite as convinced as he had been when watching the CCTV footage of his former lover’s arrest that the Winter Soldier had surrendered his control, Steve called out, into the gloom. “Buck?”

It was quiet. Then came the croak.

“Steve?”

Steve felt his knees thudding down beside the cot before he’d realised he’d allowed himself to move. “Buck, I’m here. Buck.” He’d planned for this moment’s arrival for so long, and when it came, he had no words. And then… “I thought you were smaller.”

There was no smile. Only a chewed, raw bottom lip leaking blood sluggishly down an overgrown chin. Silvery eyes Steve once knew better than his own, eyes he had sketched a thousand times, had rendered in charcoal, oil, watercolour and chalk, staring out at him from a pallid face. An expression far too haunted to immortalise in any medium. Steve found himself reaching out, smoothing a smudge of red away from a dimple. His thumb encountered grey, clammy skin, and Bucky’s eyes fluttered, the curtains drawing closed. Those shallow breaths became more ragged still, and Steve understood, almost on an instinctive, fundamental level, that the weight of the child was crushing his lungs.

“I’m going to get you out of here.”

Steve took in the thick, reinforced cuffs around Bucky’s right wrist, the chains that pulled taught from the bed bolted to the floor. They’d removed his left arm, leaving a bandaged stump looped by yet another chain and latched to a band of iron round his throat. Both the collar and loop were wrenched tight and welded into concrete beneath the bed frame. Could Steve break it? Yes. Could he do so without hurting Bucky? That he even had to contemplate the possibility told him what he needed.

That cracked voice came again, from those scabbed and clotting lips, only to be cut short by a gasp. “I knew you’d – ah!” Bucky’s face crumpled and his body arched. Straining against unyielding metal, his form became one bulbous, trembling bridge, wracked and contorted. Breath after breath huffed through his nose as the wave of pain rolled through his body. His fist clenched, and Steve grabbed for it.

“I’ve got you, you’re alright, it’s ok,” whispered Steve. The seizure seemed to go on and on, a full minute passing before the brunet sagged like a puppetmaster cut his strings. “The baby? It’s coming?”

“Don’t let them know!” Bucky hissed, urgent, wild with need to impart the importance of his message. “Steve, please. They’ll take her. They always take them.”

There was no fragment of Steve nor Captain America that could take in what his oldest friend was telling him, nor what it indicated for the tenuous grasp the man he loved might have over his mental state.

Another bottle clinked into place on the overcrowded shelf.

“Alright. Follow my lead.” He squeezed Bucky’s hand, and surged to his feet calling, “Lieutenant Decoux!”

“Captain?” The dark-skinned man peered around the doorway and found himself confronted with the physical embodiment of Captain America’s unbreakable stubbornness.

“You’re to release this man into my custody. Immediately.”

“Sir?”

“That’s an order. He has intelligence of an urgent nature. Imminent threat. Priority Platinum.” Steve raised his chin and forced his gaze into the officer’s pupils. “Captain’s orders.”

The magic words snapped something free in Lieutenant Decoux. “Aspirante. You heard the man. Let’s give the prisoner’s chains to Captain Rogers.”

Steve found a small smile. “That won’t be necessary. Remove the cuffs and collar. I can handle him.”

A flash of consternation crossed both soldiers’ faces. “Sir?”

“I’ve managed worse monsters than the one you’ve got in there.”

The Aspirante snorted a laugh. “That mutant? That great gut hanging between his legs? Yeah, I know who I’m betting on. I’ll get your man for you Captain Rogers.”

As easy as that, with little more than some grumbling, clinking and tugging, Bucky was being passed into his arms. Steve wrenched the other man’s head forwards by the neck of the grubby, oversized t-shirt he wore, and growled low into his ear – as if delivering a warning. “Can you walk?”

“This isn’t our sodding threshold, and my brain may be holey but I think I’d remember a proposal.”

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe later.”

“So many promises.”

“Captain Rogers?” Lieutenant Decoux’s uncertain voice broke through the whispers of 20th Century humour. “Should we inform the Commander? She’ll want to know if a Platinum incident is imminent.”

“If you want.” The men attempting to speak to Steve had ceased to matter. There was only one that did, and nothing on the planet or circling it could stop Steve now that one had been returned to him. He shifted Bucky’s weight, arranging them until he was plastered to the pregnant man’s left-hand side. The brawn and sinew of the original super soldier’s torso covered the vulnerable flank of the second, while his arm winched tight around what had once been a narrow, delicious waist and was now a bloated, tumescent, unrecognisable expanse.

Beyond the door was freedom, safety, comfort, the future.

Together, they took their first steps. Bucky’s stomach proceeded them out.

-

It became rapidly clear that, while Bucky could power through discomfort and the weakness with his own, learned brand of stubbornness, they had a bigger problem. Stripped of the hulk of metal that had kept him alive through manifold threats, and his centre of gravity hauled forwards by his stomach, Bucky was dangerously off balance. Despite the loop of Steve’s bicep pinning him in place, every other step was a stumble.

The pair weaved and shuffled down the corridor before them, silent, all their focus on taking one faltering step after another. Three minutes crawled by in this fashion before the shout came. “Captain Rogers!”

An indeterminate length of hallway lay between them and the elevator.

“Run?”

“Run.”

Half-dragging, half-hopping, a super soldier’s three-legged race commenced, a rush of determination and desperation throwing Bucky forwards into a more rapid stagger than before. Steve attempted to simultaneously cover his six, positioning a wall of muscle between pursuit and his lover, while continuing to bear as much of his weight as he could.

As he picked up the pace, Bucky spat, “That’s all Captain America’ll get me in Italy? Three minutes? I could’ve got four with actual dynamite”

“Says the man who was in a collar and leash four minutes ago.”

“I thought you liked that kind of thing. Or did I misremember that too?”

Up ahead, the corridor was no longer as empty as it once had been. Two officers were exiting the elevator they were aiming for, and looking in the direction of the racing soldiers in alarm. And the men behind them were gaining, the slam, slam, slam of their footsteps growing ever louder. But Bucky was just yards from the newly arrived officers. They were the greater threat.

With a curse, Steve peeled forwards, throwing himself at the woman to Bucky’s left, breaking her attempt to reach for her weapon. She went down with a single blow, though Steve didn’t stop to watch her fall, too busy darting round to grab the other, hurling them bodily into the wall. An instant later, Steve was grappling for Bucky’s outstretched arm and pulling him into the elevator a fraction for a second before the doors slid closed.

Bucky’s body was heaving even as he collapsed against the furthest corner. Steve recognised the same tension within him that had accompanied the contraction not long before.

“You need a minute?”

A juddering nod. “Yeah but - They’re watching us.” Bucky’s anguish at that fact was plain enough to a man who had flung himself from planes without a second thought for him.

In a single motion, Steve jammed the emergency button and leapt for the camera nestled in the ceiling above. The mechanical eye dropped to the ground and the elevator ceased its ascent, as Bucky propped himself against the handrail, letting the metal take his weight. Rolling his head to the ceiling, he held himself frozen, rigid against the pain. The tendons on his arm bulged. And Steve couldn’t stay away.

“Buck, can I –”

Another nod, blunter this time, and Steve let himself crowd into his once-lover’s space. Bucky’s head drooped forwards into the crook of Steve’s neck, nestling, hiding away for a moment’s comfort. It was as if a day hadn’t passed since last they’d held each other close. They fit. They always had, no matter their shapes. Steve slid his hand across the other man’s back, rubbing the warm, worn cloth gently as Bucky fought a silent battle against the forces at play in his core. The labouring man was mute throughout, but not still, twisting and twitching against the form that sheltered him.

Steve slid his hand upwards to cradle Bucky’s neck as the tension faded away, and when Bucky tried to break apart, Steve caught him.

“I’m fully operational. We can move on. Keep going,” Bucky stated.

“One more minute won’t hurt,” Steve responded.

“I’m fine.”

“It’s not for you punk,” Steve shot back. He raised his fingers to Bucky’s temples, scraping his fingers through the long, lank hair in a way he knew would raise shivers. Using the moment he’d granted them to comb those dark strands back and away so he could see Bucky’s face properly in the florescent lighting from above. “I missed you,” Steve breathed. His lips were somehow an inch away from Bucky’s chapped, bloodstained ones.

A mangled noise escaped Bucky’s throat. Not a sound of pain. A sound of wanting. And then his hips were settling back against the rail, his fist was at Steve’s nape and he was hauling their bodies together.

Their kiss was sour, tinged with copper, yet it sparked a fire in Steve’s gut that had been damp for generations. “Bucky!” he gasped out against those feverish lips, immediately helpless. The cracks and scabs against his own, sensitive bottom lip and chin dragged him back to another Italy, another time, to so many nights. Bucky clutched at him, just as broken, just as made whole, then as now. It was everything, to be pressed like this, to taste like this, to lick into the other’s mouths like this. As if they could meld into each other just like this, through desperate, heated kiss after desperate, heated kiss.

And then, unbidden, the elevator groaned and began to move.

Steve took an agonisingly reluctant step back, tucking limp strands of hair behind Bucky’s ear one last time. They didn’t have a chance to put themselves back together more than that. “Let’s get you out of here darlin’.” The temptation to sway forwards once again was almost unbearable, but the elevator was coming to a stop. Their minute was up, and they could hear voices beyond the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments, they were a lovely surprise. Please accept another offering, readers of the internet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real world is pants. Have another chapter.

Forty-seven officers stood arranged in the lobby, guns drawn and trained on the elevator doors. Commander Van Schie stood at the apex of the phalanx, taser in her hand.

“Captain Rogers. Sergeant Barnes. Put your hands in the air and get on your knees.” Her voice sliced through the room.

“I’m sorry ma’am, I can’t do that.” Steve was slotting himself back at Bucky’s side, testing his stability, calculating how much weight to take.

“No matter who this man is, we have not released him from our custody. I will not hesitate to order my officers to fire if you attempt to remove him without permission.”

“You good to go again?” Steve murmured to Bucky, who gave a grim nod in return. More loudly, Steve called back, “You can order all you like ma’am. But you gotta ask yourself some questions about the officer who fires first at Captain America and a pregnant POW.” Together, they began to move, taking slow and careful steps, steadier with practice, while Steve continued, “Opening fire on unarmed, allied soldiers. Which nation wants to declare war on the US _and_ the Avengers?” As they limped forwards, Steve met the eyes of each officer they passed. The closest wore khaki brown at his shoulders. “Poland? Will they be first?”

“Captain Rogers, stop right there.”

“The Dutch, Commander? We helped liberate Nijmegen and Eindhoven.”

“I am ordering you to halt.”

“Spain? We sunk the Leviathan off your shores.”

“Not another step.”

“Italy? He was at Azzano.”

“Captain!”

“France? We fought at fucking Normandy!”

The pop of the taser was almost undetectable over Steve’s final curse, but every person in the room saw Bucky lurch backwards, twisting, so that the probe which had been aimed for Steve’s back embedded itself in the bandage of his shoulder. They all saw how Steve moved to catch him, an instant before his knees cracked into the floor. The room was silent as the grave while the pregnant man’s body jerked and shook. Silent as a morgue as Steve wrenched the probes free. Silent as he shot a glare that promised a gruesome end at the woman whose weapon trailed cables onto the ground.

“Nijmegen en Eindhoven,” he repeated before a groan tore his attention back to Bucky. “Eyes on me Buck, let me see you.” The older man raised his chin, grimacing.

“How many times? You gotta… have someone watch your six. Don’t know how you… survived this long without me.”

“Buck.”

There were so many eyes upon them. Dozens upon dozens of soldiers, whispering, hitching their arms higher. There were more, beyond, crowding the doorways. Voices starting to rise, the voices of strangers, judging, commenting, coming to a myriad of separate, uninformed conclusions because what the hell could they understand?

“The baby…”

One of Steve’s hands found Bucky’s, clasped tight against his domed stomach. The other cradled his jaw, stroking gently. “She’s gonna be ok. She’s yours, she’s strong.”

Bucky was still trying to speak. “Not that, I… Fuck!” The brunet slid his hand down the curve of his belly, down, between his legs. Steve’s fingers, along for the ride, felt the spreading wetness, glanced down and saw the growing puddle of clear liquid, glanced up and saw the terror on Bucky’s face.

“Ok, I’m done.” Steve scooped Bucky up into his arms and stood, sweeping the room for anyone who might have been bold enough to move towards them. No one had, the intensity radiating off the two living relics too fierce to risk intruding upon. No one did now, as one curled himself into the other’s chest, still trembling, and the other dared the world to fight him for this man, this man who had thrown himself into the line of fire without a thought.

The soldiers melted back, clearing a path.

-

Sam swooped down the moment Steve stepped into the bright light of the EGF’s central courtyard. His wings stayed snapped out as he fell a step behind the blond, a carbon-fibre shield at his back.

“Want me to take him Cap?”

“No, I’ve got him. Widow?”

Their boots snapped against the ground in perfect synchrony, rapid but not running, quick enough to escape before the Gendarmerie had a chance to regroup, but slow enough to avoid jostling Steve’s load unnecessarily.

“Car outside the gates.”

“Hawkeye?” He could feel the heat of eyes upon them, emanating from every one of the four buildings surrounding the courtyard. He had no doubt some of those eyes were trained through scopes. Any cover Clint could provide had the potential to be of use. 

All business, Sam confirmed, “2 o’clock.”

Steve glanced up and caught the glint of sunlight off an arrow tip, the missile trained over his shoulder.

“And Tony and Thor are on their way.”

“So’s the baby.” Steve knew Natasha and Clint would hear him through Sam’s comms. “Stick to the skies?”

“On it.”

At once, Sam launched himself into the air, becoming a circling shadow on the concrete ground.

In Steve’s hold, Bucky was scowling. “Didn’t I throw that guy off a helicarrier?”

“Yeah, I think he was grumpier about the wing you snapped than the plummeting out of the sky bit though.” Steve’s shrug was little more than a flex, but the sentiment was clear. “Don’t worry about it. My friends are like us: they make a habit outta bouncing back.”

“Convenient.” Bucky’s arm squeezed around Steve’s neck, trying to help, trying to minimise how much of a burden he was being. And if his movement meant their foreheads were brought closer together then that wasn’t the worst outcome in the world either.

Someone must have phoned ahead of them because the gates on the compound began to swing open as Steve approached them. No one called for them to halt. No shots rang out. The guards didn’t even glance at them. There was just an SUV idling outside, the whistle of an arrow, buzz of a zip wire, and the thud of Clint’s boots on the ground. He moved swiftly enough to open the car door for Steve and his once-lover. Two doors slammed, and a moment later Natasha was stomping on the accelerator and swinging the car out into the street.

“Hospital?”

Still tucking Bucky into a comfortable position along the car’s back seats as the question was asked, Steve felt the physical reaction to that word run through the older man. The violence of it was like the first spike of the taser’s current.

“Safe house.”

“Which one?” Between shifts on surveillance, they’d secured three locations; a bolthole in the city, one in the countryside, and another across the Swiss border.

Steve dropped his voice. “How long’ve we got darlin’? Can you hold on for a bit?”

Even as he asked, Bucky was going rigid again. As he coiled in on himself, the hand he had available to him bracing and clenching on the fabric of the seat, his head pressing back hard into Steve’s abdomen, still Bucky managed to huff out through the contraction, “Yeah, yeah I’m good. I’m not close yet.”

“Alright. Get us out of the city Nat,” Steve ordered, before turning gentle again. “We’ve got a place in the mountains, abandoned track, trees for miles. And reinforcements coming. It’s a safe place, isolated, defensible…” He was just rambling, but as he painted the scene as well as he could with his words, he could see Bucky drifting. The brunet’s focus was turning inward, he was sinking far away from the SUV and deep into the inner workings of his body as the pain grew to a peak and then slowly drained away. Steve had just finished describing the potted plants when Bucky finally relaxed back into him.

Taking advantage of the reprieve, the blond reached into the trunk of the car for one of the blankets they’d huddled under through the past three nights.

From the front, Natasha spoke up, “Отдохни немного Джеймс. Мы позаботимся о тебе.”

Bucky cocked his head. “Natalia?”

She threw a smile over her shoulder even as she shot through a red. “Ты вспомнил?”

“Он возвращается. Не все. Но за последние несколько месяцев все больше и больше. Были танцы? А стрельба?” The Russian bounced off his tongue, a welcome distraction from being helped to awkwardly peel himself out of his sodden pants.

“Это правильно.”

Clint piped up. “Также привет. Я клинт.”

Balling up the wet fabric to toss in the back, as Natasha jerked the wheel to pull them screeching down an alleyway that seemed too narrow for a car as wide as theirs, Steve observed, “There’s no way this isn’t going to spell trouble for me. Three super assassin spies talking behind my back in a language I don’t understand, that’s gonna be totally fine.”

The joke bled even more of the tension from the body resting against Steve’s, tucked now beneath a blanket permeated with the scent of incense and must and more comfortable crunched in the back seat both soldiers were far too large for than he had been in decades. The idea of a future. The idea of laughter. The idea three super assassin spies could be the cause of good, harmless trouble rather than the kind of trouble that left bodies broken and children crying.

As the car quieted to nothing more than the hum of the engine and the occasional all clear seeping through the comms from Sam up above, that future began to extend its hand out to Steve too. It beckoned to him, that impossible possibility. He found his eyes drawn to Bucky’s swollen stomach, an irresistible temptation before him. Suddenly tentative, distant as he was from the urgency that had gripped them in the elevator, he reached for the thing he wanted. His palm slipped beneath the blanket. Underneath his hand, the fabric of Bucky’s shirt was warm, rising slowly and steadily with each breath he took, no longer shallow, ragged or strained. Bucky didn’t flinch at the touch, didn’t react, just let it happen. So Steve tried something new, slowly rubbing circles over the gravid belly that had pulled him from the church without a second thought. Miraculously, Bucky’s dark lashes fluttered closed, his enjoyment of the gentle pressure Steve’s palm exerted obvious. Those lashes flared open again when Steve’s fingers found their way under the threadbare shirt, skin finding skin.

There was hunger in that gaze, and something ravenous roused in Steve in return. How long had they been tripping along their separate paths, starved of this?

Eyes misted, Steve had to tear himself away, glancing towards the window. As if holding the line, as if doing his actual job to guard his charge. And then he felt Bucky’s stomach move. Beneath dry, soft skin, a form shifted. The idea, not just of a future, but of a future with a child.

“Keep it together Rogers.” Natasha’s eyes were fixed on the road. How did she know?

The reminder came as, beneath his hand, Bucky’s stomach began to harden and a contraction broke over him once again.

-

Even with Natasha’s creative approach to driving, even with Sam as their own personal traffic warning system, it took an hour and a half for them to reach the safe house. An hour and a half of Bucky silently struggling against the pains gripping at his gut every five minutes while Steve sat there tense and helpless. An hour and a half braced for anyone on their trail, for threat, for pursuit. The last fifteen minutes of that time involved rough terrain, the car clambering up into the mountains on unmade roads which jolted them from one side of the car to the other.

“Natasha,” growled Steve as Bucky heaved himself over the side of their seats to vomit up bile for the third time. He had to lock his forearm around the brunet’s retching chest to keep him from falling into the well at their feet.

“Four and a half minutes,” Natasha promised. “Извини, Джеймс.”

Still hanging between the seats, Bucky choked out, “Это не проблема,” repeating “It’s not a problem” for Steve’s benefit as he was helped back into a seated position and passed a bottle of water – just as the car hit a pit and threw him sideways once more. Grey and shivering as he righted himself, Bucky managed the briefest of sips before another contraction took hold and he folded. The plastic bottle dropped from his hand, glugging water mingling with the vomit at their feet.

“I can, fuck… I can hear your brain fre-freaking out from here Steve,” Bucky panted out, pressing his forehead into the back of Natasha’s headrest as he tried to simultaneously brace himself against the car’s movements and the tightening of his abdomen. “Calm down. Shit, my back - Make it stop.” Whether that final moan addressed his impatience with Steve or was the first audible expression of pain he’d expressed throughout his labour, it was not clear – but it sent Steve recoiling backwards. Yet a few moments later, Bucky was throwing himself back against his side. “Distract me doll. Tell me ah- ah -again about where we’re going.” There was a franticness to his movements, to his speech, that hadn’t been there before.

Steve hurried to answer. “It’s just on the other side of those trees. You’ll see it in a tick.”

“Tell me there’s a shower. And a bed.”

“Yeah Buck, there’s a shower and a bed. Several in fact. You can have your pick. And as much hot water as you want.” Steve nosed at damp hair, pulled back from the base of Bucky’s neck, trying to find a place to put his hands that would ease even just a modicum of the pain Bucky was feeling. He was sure the contraction ought to have finished its crescendo but the pregnant man was still panting harshly against him. “It’s safe. It’s protected. And whenever you want to head out, Sam’ll pick up the jet and we’ll go wherever you want to go. Just you, me and her.”

A strained laugh. “And as many of your bouncy friends as I decide I like?”

“You got it.”

The rough pants were slowing at last. Outside the SUV, the dark trees they were shooting past were suddenly lit up, stark, in white light. Almost immediately, thunder crashed overhead. Just as it did, something heavy collided with the roof. The car was sent rocking all over again. Bucky moved so fast to reach for a weapon he didn’t posses that he almost overbalanced. Perhaps it was a trick of the lightning, but Steve was certain his once-lover’s eyes flashed black.

Quickly, before Bucky could snatch up a gun from the assassins in the front seat and find himself with a broken arm, Steve shouted, “No, no Buck – that’s Thor! It’s ok. A friend. Thor. Reinforcements, I told you.”

“Christ. If I wasn’t already in labour,” Bucky muttered, clearly trying to will his body out of attack mode. “I thought the bouncing thing was a metaphor. Captain America? Captain Bloody Literal.”

“Two minutes,” Clint informed them.

Bucky had quirked his gaze up at the roof, peering for a look at the man who had joined them for the last leg of their drive. “Does this Thor guy have a cape? It's like he's making it easy.”

-

Tony was waiting for them outside a two-story pinewood chalet, the house positioned in absolute solitude, standing alone overlooking slopes of evergreen and granite stripped of any other sign of human life. The chalet’s balcony was decorated with Christmas tree-shaped cutouts and flowers spilled from baskets on three sides.

“What kind of safehouse is this?” Bucky asked, as Steve helped him from the car, a critical eye taking in the building’s easily scalable split levels, fragile glass doorways and the elaborately carved cornices that provided unnecessary handholds.

“One day soon, you’re going to meet a woman named Pepper Potts and you’re going to fall in love with her,” Steve replied with a wry grin, noticeably not answering the question.

“We all did,” confirmed Clint.

“She is fearsome indeed,” Thor intoned, jumping down from the car roof and holding his hand over his heart. “Greetings, mate of Steve Rogers, and hearty congratulations.”

“Hello?”

“We all do love Pepper,” Natasha swooped in to save Bucky, even as she snapped her door closed and sashayed round to the trunk. “Yet only one of us gets to go home to her each night. Come meet Tony.”

The sharply-dressed billionaire strode forwards, hand outstretched in greeting. “Welcome home solider. The sauna’s fired up. The pools’re heated. And there’s a forty-five year old Glenfiddich in the family room ready to whet the baby’s head whenever you’re, you know, finished with all that. Oh and-” With little more than a flick of an eyebrow, from every side there came the sound of boosters. Then two dozen simultaneous crashes as twenty-four flying metal men punched their way to the ground. “-a state of the art AI-activated shield of iron. World’s smartest, most effective home security – ah, ah Steve, he’s crushing my hand, Steve he’s breaking my bones. Steve, what did I do? Call off your bionic attack dog Steve, I’ll say please.”

Clint, passing by with two duffels full of equipment swung over his shoulder, helpfully informing Tony, “That’s his normal flesh hand Stark. Not a cyborg anymore. Thought you’d have clocked that. Aren’t robots your thing?”

“The Captain’s mate is strong! A mighty warrior!” Thor boomed.

Actively sweating, Tony protested, “Yeah, no, getting that. Super solider. Ow?”

The attention Steve was paying to Tony’s babbling was minimal at best, hyper-focused as he was on Bucky. The brunet was bent almost double, gulping at frigid mountain air, and clinging onto Tony for dear life, as if the billionaire was the only thing holding him together let alone up. The spasm went on for almost two minutes and Bucky was shaking by the end of it.

“Sorry, sorry,” Bucky huffed at Tony, releasing the hand he’d squeezed as he attempted to recover himself. Standing entirely upright appeared temporarily beyond him, and he flung out his arm to grasp at Steve’s shirt instead.

“That wasn’t five minutes,” Steve observed, brow furrowing as he eased Bucky’s arm around his neck once more, taking the weight without a blink. From the corner of his eye, he saw red and gold metal crawling over Tony’s palm. “That wasn’t even four.”

“They’re getting closer,” Bucky nodded, body still hunched, teeth still gritted, as if the pain hadn’t totally faded as it had each time before. “Help me inside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations (please forgive any mistakes):  
> Отдохни немного Джеймс. Мы позаботимся о тебе - Rest for a bit James. We’ll get you safe  
> Ты вспомнил? You remembered?  
> Он возвращается. Не все. Но за последние несколько месяцев все больше и больше. Были танцы? А стрельба? - It’s coming back. Not all of it. But for the past few months, more and more. There was dancing? And shooting?  
> Это правильно - That’s right.  
> Также привет. Я клинт - Also hello. I’m Clint.  
> Извини, Джеймс – I’m sorry James  
> Это не проблема – It’s not a problem


	4. Chapter 4

Warm water cascaded down the curve of Bucky’s back, a heavy, heated rainfall that sent billowing steam towards the ceiling of the underground pool room he’d chosen as his temporary hideaway. One glance at the panoramic glass of the chalet’s master bedroom had him slamming the door with such force it would likely never close again, and spurred a rapid retreat to somewhere more enclosed while Sam and Tony bickered over what hinges ought to look like in their optimum form. The walk-in shower within the windowless basement room was about as enclosed as it could be, and Bucky’s desire for hot water had somewhat outweighed his disgust at the glitter-encrusted tiles and rainbow LED lights the shower appeared to possess.

Steve hesitated on one side of the fogged-up glass, conscious of his once-lover’s nakedness. “Am I okay to come in?”

Propped up against an in-built ledge on the tiled wall that was probably designed for shampoo bottles, Bucky hummed a roughly affirmative “Mhhm.”

Pulling off his own shirt, Steve stepped towards the edge of the spray, only to find Bucky reaching back to hook his fingers into Steve’s belt and pull him in closer.

“Hands. Back.”

Permission to touch. Permission to give in to temptation. Permission to help. Steve’s fingers immediately found slick flesh, ridged and pitted with a lifetime’s worth of scars. The marks of hurts the Winter Solider had taken without flinching, absorbed in order to keep hurting in turn. The marks of hurts bestowed upon him to keep him in line, the world’s best trained guard dog. Steve remembered a browned, muscled expanse of skin, young, unblemished, tanning in the sun beating down on Brighton Beach, rippling with laughter as well as strength. A thousand years ago. Whatever knock off serum they’d given Bucky hadn’t been enough to return that to him.

Smoothing his fingers upwards, Steve’s touch found the sticky edges of the plastic wrap Natasha had bestowed upon a new dressing, stark and white upon the already pale skin of Bucky’s shoulder. She’d whisked her fellow assassin away from Steve to do it. For all the subtlety and grace she had to keep herself alive through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, she couldn’t half be direct when she wanted to.

“Lower,” Bucky grunted, as he rolled from one pain into the next. They seemed constant now, ceaseless, each one merging with the one before it, distinguishable only by peaks that had him crying out and troughs where he could just about force a word or two.

“Here?”

A frantic nod as Steve pressed his thumbs into the small of Bucky’s back. His muscles were ropes of steel beneath the scars, flexing and pulling as he shifted, continually, in a desperate yet vain hunt for a more comfortable position.

When was the last time someone touched him like this? With gentleness? To ease rather than to cause hurt? Steve prayed, in the so far unevidenced hope that someone could hear him, that his own hands had not been the last to do so. He rubbed in slow, determined circles, trying to track Bucky’s movements, to follow the twisted muscles and target the thrum of pain that was swelling and unravelling as the minutes passed under the cascade of water. But the contractions gripped Bucky’s form, one after another after another after another, the pain a band around his entire abdomen. There was no one place that would bring relief, no single knot that could be unwound and leave him restored.

As his body prepared itself, winching open, Bucky swayed, and groaned, and panted “Ah – ah – ah!” And Steve was glad for the sounds. Glad Bucky could trust him enough to know giving himself away would hold no punishment. That he was safe. But even they couldn’t drown out the storm of questions thundering in Steve’s brain.

Another contraction ratcheted up, with an intensity that had Bucky moaning, cries tumbling into each other at each new level of pain, “Mhmm – oh fuck, Christ! – aaah! Mfft!” Bucky’s fist collided with the wall as he shouted out. His legs were trembling and Steve skimmed his fingers down to cup the top of his thighs, keeping him upright and stable.

“Deep breaths Buck. Slow breaths. You’ve got this.”

But the other man showed no signs of being able to hear him. With a whimper of “Fuck - Steve!” Bucky pushed himself off the wall and backwards, crashing into the bulk of Steve’s body until the blonde’s arms wrapped around him, holding him up, plastering wet skin against wet skin as the brunet struggled against the crush of pain within him. All Steve could do was hold on to him. Instinctively, he placed a palm against the very base of Bucky’s stomach, fingers grazing rough curls, and pressed gently down. A broken sob told him he was where he most was needed, at last.

Finally, the pain reached a manageable level and Bucky sagged back against the wall, breathing heavily. “Holy shit.”

Steve had moved with Bucky, folding as he did, uncertain about his once-lover’s ability to remain standing unaided and determined to maintain his steadying grip until told otherwise. His lips were therefore against Bucky’s ear when the question slipped out of him.

“God, darlin’. How many times did you have to do this alone?”

Bucky froze. Not so much like a deer in the headlights as living flesh turned to stone.

Steve started backwards in alarm, only to find Bucky suddenly was moving, flinching away from him. The air about them was thick with moisture and the brunet was gasping at it. Unable to breathe. Filling himself with panic but not air. “Get – turn – back. I can’t – behind me – Steve! Not behind.”

With a veritable leap forwards – a leap which had him crashing bodily into enamel and ceramic – Steve threw himself as far in front of Bucky’s eyeline as the small space allowed, hands in the air. “It’s clear. There’s no one at your back.”

“Cap?” Clint’s voice, calling from his position at the top of the stairwell, was cautious.

Steve’s chin snapped up, quickly reassuring himself that Clint hadn’t chosen to approach, hadn’t seen Bucky fall apart. “S’all good Clint.”

“Roger.”

The break in attention appeared to be enough for Bucky to steady himself, because a moment later Steve found Bucky wrapping his arm around his neck. He clung there, hanging his weight, still breathing fast. His stomach grazed, then pressed against Steve’s, and the Avenger almost wept as Bucky explained, “I don’t – ah! Ah! – five. Well. Three then – mmmf! – twins.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Bucky nodded distractedly. “Guuuhh… this, oh fuck. This – not about them. Gahh – ahh! – This is about her.” The noises drawn from deep within Bucky’s throat were low and guttural. “Uhhhh, gahhh. Sarah. It’s about, focus – guhhnnng! – on Sarah.”

Bucky’s legs had spread, and his knees were creasing. Though he was speaking to the man above him, everything in his being was focused downwards. The tendons on his neck were standing out.

Steve could hardly take in what his once-lover had said. “Buck, you’re pushing.”

“It’s time.”

-

By rights, they were guests in Tony’s house – rapidly acquired and one of many though Tony’s house might have been. They should have stripped the duvet back before it was ruined, attempted to maintain a semblance of protection for the rich fabrics and furniture they were merely leasing. But the Red Skull’s assorted hordes themselves could not have made Steve Rogers deny Bucky Barnes a single scrap of comfort now. Watching the labouring man sink into the welcoming embrace of down and soft cotton was a pleasure in itself. The look of incredulous bliss Bucky bore only intensified as he packed a seemingly endless supply of creamy, overstuffed cushions behind his back.

“Hey!” Bucky protested when he noticed Steve’s indulgent smile. “What would your mother say if she knew you were laughing at me right now?” The shift of his body through to the final stage of labour seemed to have brought him a modicum of relief. Enough to laugh, enough to joke. Enough to make it up the stairs almost under his own power, to a room Natasha had personally supervised the reinforcement of – a reinforcement that seemed to consist of dragging a wardrobe as well as the curtains over the window, pushing the bed into a corner beneath the eaves, and inserting a heavy desk into prime barricade position.

God, it was so easy. How could it be so easy to slide into their old rhythms, seventy years and copious trauma on? Steve wasn’t naive, he knew whatever winding path was laid before them would be laden with challenges, but this… How could he have so much luck, so much grace granted to him after all this time? He had to turn away, scouting around for something to occupy himself with. His eyes alit upon a mini-fridge, tucked beneath the curving desk and brimming with water bottles. When he knelt before it, he discovered more of his team’s handiwork – a bowl of orange ice chips in the freezer compartment.

Swallowing, he asked aloud, “Can we get you a little hydrated, d’you think?”

“Sure Steve.” The soft tone told Steve he was being coddled, but he didn’t care. Bucky was quiet as he approached, grey eyes alert and tracking him. When he went to kneel beside the bed, Bucky reached for him. “What’cha doin’ all the way over there?”

Careful, so careful not to jostle him, Steve climbed up onto the mattress, following the tug of Bucky’s hand until he was almost crowding him. Propped up against the mountain of assembled pillows, turned towards each other, as entwined as they could be with the swell of Bucky’s stomach between them. This close, there was no resisting the magnetic attraction between Steve’s hand and Bucky’s belly, hard as a rock and so low it made it hard even to waddle. The heat of it seeped through Steve’s palm, as he slid it home against the base of that swell, where its position had pulled such relieved sounds before.

In a murmur, Steve asked, “Better?”

“Mhmm.”

He could tell another contraction was rising. Bucky was slotting his legs apart and bearing down. But, for this moment, he was serene, in control, breathing through the surge. Those grey eyes hid themselves, slipping closed as Bucky poured his concentration into getting oxygen into his lungs, and the journey of the child within him, shifting agonisingly through his channel. It was powerful and primal, and Steve was so ridiculously in love with this exhausted, sweating, impossibly strong man.

When those eyes slid open again, they were hazy and a blood vessel had burst in one of them.

“God…” Steve sighed.

“Just me,” Bucky smirked back. There was a flash of red as his tongue darted out to wet chapped lips.

“Here.”

Reaching across his body, Steve pulled the bowl of frozen orange juice pieces and plucked one from it. He swallowed against the slight cold burn and raised the chip to Bucky’s lips. His thumb traced slow lines against cracked, pink flesh as Bucky sucked at the ice, allowing it to gradually melt into nothing.

When Steve managed to drag his eyes away from his thumb’s own journey along that broken mouth, he found Bucky’s eyes were glistening.

“Buck!” he protested, murmuring his alarm as he smoothed his fingers upwards to slide across the bruised skin above Bucky’s cheekbones, racing to soothe before a single tear could fall.

“I’d think I was dreaming if it didn’t hurt so bad,” huffed Bucky, wetly. “I used to... I didn’t remember who you were, but I knew you, I knew your name. I remember calling for you, knowing you should be here for this. Every time.”

“I’m right here.” Steve shifted forwards, crowding further into the cozy shelter their bodies made, seeking out Bucky’s lips with his own. “End of the line, remember?” he whispered against them.

There was a quiet sound released into the space within them, and neither of them were certain who had made it. Only that there was the sweet tang of orange being shared between them, and a world shrunk to nothing more than skin and lips and touch.

Something was breaking within Steve. It wasn’t just the ice on Bucky’s tongue that was melting away, but the glacier that had been wrapped around something fundamental at his centre ever since Bucky tumbled from the train. Steve shuddered within the ocean of sensation being released inside him, the heat of Bucky’s skin and his kisses melting away the ice that had hardened around this clutch of long-buried emotion. Synapses were sparking to life, all at once, the sensation of it gushing through him as real as any physical hurt, and all Steve could do was to hold on tighter to the man within his arms.

When Bucky’s stomach seized again, and the need to push wracked him, Steve had no choice but to continue kissing him, planting one after another after another within the crook of Bucky’s neck, up and down the bristles on his throat, buried against the tender skin at his temples.

Bucky’s body curled up like a leaf, crisping in the sunlight as he pushed, wrenching his thighs up and back to create room between his narrow hips as he did so. His one arm hooked his right knee higher. “Steve, help.”

Instinctively, Steve knew what his lover needed, and he reached for the other leg, never letting up the trail of kisses, pressing them one by one on any scrap of skin that he could reach. Even as sweat prickled and pebbled, welling up from each pore, even as he acted as brace for Bucky to use and strain against. Bucky was back and so gloriously, perfectly his.

When the pain released Bucky once more, he tipped himself into the broad, muscled blonde form. Steve scooped him close, ducking his mouth now to the exposed, lightly furred chest, licking up and across a plump nipple, desperate for every taste.

“Christ, Steve, even now.” Bucky’s body was restless, breathless hips lifting, rocking between them, pressing up close, grinding into air helplessly, blocked from touching by the huge mass of his stomach. “Don’t stop, I want you.”

Lost in the tang of sweat and the high-pitched whines he was eliciting, Steve mouthed at then pulled a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard.

Bucky’s cries changed. “Ah! Ah! Steve, baby!”

Fingers twisted in short, golden strands, grasping, tugging as Steve grazed his teeth against the hyper-sensitive nub of flesh, hard and pebbled beneath his tongue. They could have been anywhere, this pair of long-lost lovers. Buried beneath warm woollen blankets, yards from a Belgian battlefield, sealing their bodies together for warmth and the glory of being alive. In a Brooklyn tenement, hands and tongues smothering any scrap of sound lest their neighbours hear them and send police or a gang their way. Wound in shared dreams, as the cold crystallised in their veins and ice shut down every other function they possessed.

“Doll, please!”

It was all the encouragement that Steve needed to slide his fingers towards Bucky’s core.

Bucky was panting, shattered, completely lost as those perfect fingers traced the inside of his thighs, up, up to wetness and then to hardness. “Yes, Steve, please – haaah!”

A crack of thunder split the air overhead. Steve jerked his head up, a string of saliva trailing from his lips to the peak of Bucky’s nipple. The lightning flashed, bright and blinding, just a moment before the heavens opened, clouds splitting, pouring water towards the Earth.

A frozen moment, as Steve locked eyes with Bucky and found them brightening with pain.

“I have to-”

“I gotta-”

The words collided and the connection broke, as Bucky rolled himself forwards and started to push, and Steve twisted towards the comms unit Natasha had left on their bedside table, incongruous beside the heavy crystal table lamp and the pale blue check of the wallpaper reflected in the table’s mirrored surface.

“Report,” he barked.

“There’s a force of many hundreds encroaching on the Man of Iron’s lands,” declared Thor.

“A force? The EGF?”

“Steve, no.” Natasha’s voice ran like quicksilver into his ear. “It’s HYDRA.”

Steve swung his gaze back towards Bucky, only to find his face colliding with the lamp as it crashed through the air.


	5. Chapter 5

The asset was alone, in a location it did not recognise, in pain, and there was an unconscious body before it. A Type 13 restart.

The asset undertook a rapid scan of its surroundings.

LOCATION. Bedroom. Bed rumpled. High end. Clean. No marks that would give away personality. Three-hole socket, double-punched. Conclusion: temporary accommodation. Italy.

UNKNOWN MALE. Strength evident. The asset peeled back an eyelid. Startling bright blue. Waking not imminent. _Warm, home, love, St_ – what was that? A fault. Pockets empty. Communications device in left ear. Identity unknown. Conclusion: moderate threat if woken.

EXTNERAL SURROUNDINGS. Rain. Shouts. Volume high. Battle. Unknown assailants. Unknown affiliation. Conclusion: threat.

SYSTEMS. Multiple faults. Serious multi-system faults. Weapon missing. Left-side trapezius and pectoral pain levels at 2.8. Disregard. Coordination sub-optimal. Weight substantially increased. Abdominal pain levels at 7.4 but fluctuating. Fault recognised as a Category 48. Conclusion: silence essential.

MISSION. Unknown.

CONCLUSION. Retreat to defensible location. Attempt repairs. Await extraction or return to handlers at optimal moment.

Movement. The unknown male.

Abdominal pain increasing to 8.9. Feedback relays detecting pressure. Category 48 Fault in advanced stages.

Immediate retreat required.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!


	6. Chapter 6

Steve’s face hurt. Why did his face hurt? Why was his face on the floor?

Understanding crashed back into him. Bucky (how many years had that man been his first thought?). The baby. HYDRA.

The bedroom was empty. So was his ear. Diving forward, Steve snatched up his bag. Shield, yes. Gun, no.

“JARVIS?” he snapped into the air.

Nothing. Tony hadn’t got that far through the installation process yet. They hadn’t intended to be here longer than a pitstop.

“Fuck!”

-

Captain America burst onto the battlefield, shield slicing through the air, past a web of lasers and into the mess of bodies swarming up the hillside surrounding the chalet. The sky was alive with lightning, webs of it crackling across the billowing clouds, throwing the forms of metal soldiers and swooping Avengers into vivid relief. The husks of no fewer than three helicopters were spitting flame and smoke into the air, their crumpled carapaces highlighted in red not just from the fire but from the protective net of energy Tony’s creations had dropped over the safehouse too. Beyond the barrier, the ground was dark with the blood and limbs of dead and incapacitated HYDRA agents, while dozens upon dozens of others crowded in tumbling, squirming knots of violence on the rocky field.

When the shield cut its way through the crowd, a surge of living, scrambling agents reacted, splitting off from the horde while the shield bounced back from shattered skull to Steve’s outstretched palm. He let them come.

The barrier parted before him, then merged back into place behind him as he sprinted into the fight, leaping over hillocks of unconscious forms in a 20ft radius around the property as he did so. His body knew what to do. How to move, how to storm, how to charge, how to plow through flesh and body armour, how to duck beneath bullets and skim under openings. As his mind was not contributing to the battle in any effective manner, it was useful. Steve ripped a path through the crowd in a mist of blood and ribbons of ruptured muscles, breaking into a throng hankering around two scarlet fighters.

“Tony!” Steve yelled as he merged with the constantly moving, flashing, blasting core of violence that was Iron Man and Black Widow. Mindlessly, Steve thrust his shield into the ribs of a man who had been inches from grabbing Natasha’s hair, shattering them as he demanded, “Where is he? “

“Gonna need more context than that Cap.” Tony’s voice emerged both altered through the filter of the metal mask and strained from exertion, as he split his focus between conversation and crunching through the mob of enemies.

A bellow from overhead, followed by the flare of ozone much closer, heralded Thor’s arrival in their midst about them. Being in the centre of a rainstorm as violent as the battle meant Steve had to bellow even louder to be heard. “Bucky! Have they got him?”

Over the sound of yells, thumps and crackling energy, Steve could just about make out Tony muttering, “J?” All the while, Thor was tossing bodies in the air with his hammer to be shot down by arrows from nowhere, while Steve and Natasha passed victims between themselves. Three knockout blows later, Steve heard Tony add aloud, “He’s in the gym.”

The answer was so incongruous, Steve faltered and a lucky blow with the butt of a gun found a home at the back of his neck. Cursing at the shock of pain, he whirled, elbow colliding with a sharp jaw and receiving a grunt in return.

“What’s the point in me giving you toys if you’re just gonna lose ‘em Cap?” Tony demanded.

“Bucky’s not a toy!”

“No I mean –”

A roar echoed through the clouds as a plane soared above them, scattering parachutes like spores directly above the chalet.

“Go!” Steve ordered, instinct still in control.

Thor and Tony took off at once, while Falcon streamed in from another direction.

Natasha bounded upwards, a lithe, living creature springing onto Steve’s back to jam her comms device in his ear, muttering, “Run the field Cap. Then get back to your boy.” As she swirled back into the melee, he caught a glimpse of her pale, shadowed face, and the red running into her mouth.

-

By the time the violence had calmed enough for Steve to jog back to the lodge, nodded through by Tony’s robots and hailed by Clint who’d found himself a roost against the chimney, there was a bullet lodged in his right thigh, two of his ribs were fractured, his nose had been knocked out of shape for the umpteenth time, and he was drenched in rainwater, soot, mud and the bodily fluids of a score of dead. The team were cleaning up the dregs of humanity who’d fooled themselves into thinking they could surround an Avenger’s safehouse and snatch Captain America’s lover from under his nose. JARVIS had concluded the HYDRA force was a relatively hastily-assembled crew of those who’d survived the combined efforts of SHIELD and James Barnes to clear house, who - having planned to grab the Winter Soldier in Vincenza before Steve decided to have some strong opinions about the matter – had convinced themselves the chalet would be easy pickings.

“Thank you, JARVIS,” said Steve, as the AI finished laying out his reasoning in his patient, matter-of-fact tone. “Can you put me through to my comms device please? Direct line, no interruptions.”

“Of course, Captain Rogers. You’re through now,” JARVIS assured him.

Hauling himself towards the porch, Steve called softly, knowing the microphone would pick up his words. “Hey Buck, can you hear me?”

There was no verbal response, but Steve was almost certain he could hear a rough, indrawn breath in his ear.

“It’s alright if you can’t talk. The house is safe. I’m on my way to you now.”

“According to Stark satellites, Sergeant Barnes’ heat signature is still on location,” JARVIS offered helpfully.

“Thanks.” Steve paused and took two steps backwards. “Hawkeye, get this back to Nat?” he called up to the archer on the roof, and hurled the earpiece up to him.

Clint snatched it out of the sky with a “Roger Rogers.”

Picking up the pace, Steve trotted as quickly as he could up the porch and through the entrance hallway. He was off-kilter, pushing his feet faster than they wanted to respond with a slug in one of his legs, and he almost cracked a few more bones tripping down the curving wooden stairs to the basement. In his rush, he crashed bodily against the door to the pool room, only to find himself colliding with solid, unyielding weight as the door refused to budge for him.

“Goddamn – Bucky!” Steve propped himself up against the barricaded door, nerves still jangling, ribs demanding to know how they’d wronged him. “Bucky, it’s me pal. It’s Steve. It’s ok, fight’s all but done.” He waited, forehead against the light grain, but there was no response to his clumsy attempt at reassurance. “If you can’t let me in, can you talk to me Buck? Can you say something? Just let me know you’re ok?”

But there was nothing. No sound. Steve waited just long enough for his brain to catch up. “Well of course he’s not okay, idiot. He’s giving birth, alone, without proper medical care, while hiding from the Nazis who brainwashed and tortured him for 70 years” – before shouting out, “Step back Buck. I’m coming through.”

Steve had to retreat several paces up the stairs to get enough of a run up, but then he was launching himself forwards and crashing through not only the relatively flimsy pool room door but the weighty storage unit that appeared to have been dragged behind it. The crash of splintering wood was deafening, and Steve couldn’t smother a yelp of pain as the sharp horn of a decorative metal deer which had once been displayed on the shelves pierced the flesh above his hip.

“Should maybe have worn the suit,” he scolded himself in lieu of his literal wingman. Out loud, he called, “It’s okay!” though there was no one in the room to hear him. The pool, the showers and the sauna were all empty. The gym lay beyond, and he limped his way over to it. When he tried the handle, he was unsurprised to find it locked.

With a slow breath in and a steady exhalation out, Steve forcibly stilled himself. The best thing he could do was to listen. The background hum of electricity and heating systems were a constant, easily dismissible as the grating, consistent noise of the 21st Century. The battle beyond the house’s walls was still distinguishable, but he had learned generations before to snatch naps just as close to ongoing warfare. They both had. He tuned it all out to focus on something closer.

There! The sound of a grunt, stifled, cut short oh so swiftly, but still, undeniably, there.

He had to be so scared.

Marshalling calm, Steve dropped his voice low, projecting intimacy and honesty in a way he suspected the Winter Soldier’s handlers never had. “She’s close now, isn’t she? Sarah? You’re so close to holding little Sarah.”

Silence met that statement.

“You’re probably wondering how I know that you’ve been calling her Sarah in your head all this time hmm? I bet you’ve never told anyone else their names. Am I right? They could take them away, but you’d always be able to hold on to a little part of them if you kept their names.”

Doubt was plaguing him. Had he imagined the grunt of moments before? Had the Soldier scrambled out of the basement window as Steve toppled through the pool room – undoubtedly the escape route that had made the gym a preferable nest? Was he even now breaking for the treeline? Why had Steve been foolish enough to surrender his link to JARVIS? But he ploughed onwards. “There’s little Sarah. Did you have a Rebecca too? Or a wee George?” A flash of inspiration – a stray pup Bucky had named for the 24 hours they’d looked after him – “And Bernard? You’ve never told anyone their names, have you? You’d have to really trust someone to tell them those names, trust them with not just your life but your kids’ lives. Trust them that they could help you?”

There it was. Something new. The sound of metal against marble, the slow, dragging sounds of resistance. Thumps and clatters. Then the door clicked open.

Cautious now, moving with the kind of care his beat up body generally preferred, Steve pushed against the gym door until it caught on what appeared to be a discarded dumbbell. As he edged closer, he found himself confronted with what was left of a hastily assembled then disassembled, makeshift barricade – a toppled exercise bike, a rowing machine, a barrel of water. He had to clamber over the dispersed remains, biting back a wince as he did so, in order to see the man who had erected it retreating back into the furthest corner of the room.

The difference between this man and the Bucky of half an hour before was clear as daylight. There was none of the yielding softness, none of the ribbing, sparkling humour and challenge, nothing of that old ease Steve had so simply fallen in love with a thousand times over. The room stank of his fear and the blood that streaked his thighs. Thighs that were clamped tightly closed. Those silver eyes which had smirked and even flashed with pleasure were watching Steve with the wariness of a cornered animal, from under a mess of dark hair that was plastered to his forehead. And in his hand, steady and sure, was the pistol from Steve’s bag.

“Do you know who I am?” Steve asked, conscious of not looking wildly more presentable than his partner as he dripped filth and rainwater onto the floor. When the Soldier’s expression remained fixed, Steve nodded. “That’s ok. I know you don’t remember everything. They take the memories from you, like they do the babies, don’t they?” The glare flickered away, just for an instant, the gun drooping momentarily. When the gaze caught Steve’s again, the blankness sent a flare of anger up through Steve’s gut. The anger at every wretch who had done this to his Bucky, for every decade they held him and every wrong done unto him that had stripped him bare. The flame fizzed towards a mountain of fuel, stored up and building for months on end. “You don’t need to know who I am. Only that I will stand between you and the people who would take Sarah from you. This is their blood I’m wearing right now. And I promise I will drop mountains on them and crush their bones to dust if they come near you again. I will tear them into pieces so small their species will be unrecognisable. I will set them ablaze and watch them burn until even their thoughts are smoke in the wind. But first, I’m going to help you meet your daughter, your Sarah.”

As Steve spoke, as his voice rose, he paced gradually closer, alert for any motion from the defensive, rigid huddle on the ground before him. But there was nothing, and by the time he was naming the child once more, he was kneeling by the Soldier’s side and ignoring the bolt of pain up his leg as it reminded him of his unwelcome leaden guest.

The Soldier was creasing just as Bucky had so many times over the preceding hours. His teeth were clenching down over some scrap of plastic he appeared to be using as a bit, some modern piece of abandoned exercise-wear Steve couldn’t name. But as the contraction ramped its way up, the Soldier’s hand dropped – gun and all – so he could clench at his legs, pinning them together. Every line of his body was rigid, a desperate fight underway to resist the urge to push. It was clearly agony.

All Steve could do was to reach upwards and smooth the matted hair from the Soldier’s eyes. The pain must have been paralysing, because the Soldier didn’t even flinch.

“You’re hurting yourself,” Steve murmured as the Soldier twisted, and grunts and whines worked their way past the bit. “You don’t have to fight anymore. You can stand down.”

Little bleats of misery kept escaping into the air. Every cell in Steve’s body begged him to take that misery away, even as the Soldier’s body curled into him. Steve reached for those bare, blood-stained legs. They were trembling with tension beneath his fingers, vibrating with the effort it was taking to keep them shut tight.

“Nuuuh-“ The moan of protest came as the Soldier’s hold tightened on the gun in his hand.

“Please hear me doll,” Steve urged, firmer now, moving his grip not to prise the weapon away but to rub along bone-white knuckles. “You can’t keep doing this. I know you think Sarah’s safer inside you. But this time’s different. There’s a whole pack of people protecting you now. She’ll be safe outside too this time. Right up in your arms. You’re both safe now.”

Perhaps it was the fantasy Steve was painting with his words. Perhaps it was simply because the pain released him for a moment. But the Soldier rolled backwards once more, his head thunking against the wall. The hand with the gun twitched, and tossed the weapon to the side.

It was progress. But it wasn’t enough. The baby was going to keep tearing its way through that strained, long-wracked body, no matter how he held firm. And the free hand left the Soldier all the more able to hold his legs together. Steve pressed his advantage as the Soldier fought to regain his breath. “I know you can take a lot of hurt. But Sarah’s gonna be hurting too if you don’t let her out. When you hold them, you feel how your babies have such soft little skulls don’t you? You know that. How can she take all that pressure inside you? You don’t want to hurt Sarah, do you?”

It was like he’d said the magic words. The Soldier’s legs sprung open. From his position crouched at the brunet’s side, Steve could glimpse the raw, red entrance that the Soldier had been attempting to hide, and the first sign of a dark mass of hair there.

“There she is. That’s so good.” Up close, Steve could see just how wrecked the man was. How the fear and pain and effort had worn him down, how months on the run had left him ragged. He had none of the healthy plumpness pregnancy usually brought. It was all burned up, leaving him with thread-thin reserves. He was pinched, almost grey, trembling, and Steve had to soothe him. “You’re real close to holding her, Buck.” The name slipped out without Steve’s meaning it to, but the Soldier was too lost in a fug of exhaustion to react. It gave Steve the courage to reach for the Soldier’s hand, guiding it up a few inches from his thigh, up to cradle the baby’s head, where the skin was bulging.

Silver eyes shot open in alarm and locked with Steve’s. “Sarah!” The gasp had the bit falling to the Soldier’s shoulders, and at the same moment his body seized. Immediately, the Soldier was shouting out loud and caught up in an enormous, heaving push. From Steve’s vantage point, it was if the dam had finally broken and the pressure the Soldier had been resisting was crashing down upon him, sweeping him into an undeniable, whole body effort to birth his child. His legs were vibrating with effort, and his entire form was caught in the surge of pressure and strain as he pushed and pushed the child within him down towards the world. There was terror in those silver eyes now, the intensity of the wave and the gush of sensation overwhelming him, shocking him, and Steve tipped the Soldier’s chin towards him, catching his attention as he pushed and cried and shook and moaned, unmoored.

“Slow, darlin’. Nice and slow. Breathe with me. In, out, out, out. In, out, out, out.”

The Soldier was trying, roiling, clutching at the base of his stomach while trying to follow the rhythm Steve was setting him. The deluge still had hold of him, and he groaned ceaselessly as the child ground its way through tight, trembling muscle.

“In, out, out, out. There we go,” Steve praised, trying not to think of all those times the Soldier had done this before, alone, uncoached in the dark. When there had been no one there for him to reach for. When he’d been tied and restrained. If Steve had got to him just a few hours later, how long he might have held out in that prison, in others. “Push with the pain, not against it. In, out, out, out.”

Something was wrong. The Soldier was shifting against Steve’s hand, frantic, slipping in his own sweat against the floor. His cries took on a high-pitched tone. He was roiling along with his body’s demands, heaving and pushing, pouring all his strength into the effort. But his hand was pressing against his core, and blood was spilling between his fingers. “Fault!” the Soldier managed to stammer out. “Burning, fault.”

It was moving too fast, too suddenly. He was tearing.

“Stop pushing.” It was the first time Steve had issued an order, adopting the voice Captain America used upon the battlefield, and it was gamble with the tenuous, tissue-thin layer of trust the Solider had afforded him. For a moment, he doubted the choice he’d made. But it was worth it. The voice worked. The Soldier stilled. “Just breathe with me. Let your body adjust.”

The Soldier was trying so hard, to breathe, attempting to dampen the panic and follow the pattern Steve was setting him, clinging to the instruction to guide him, whites of his wild eyes showing as they rolled back. But he stopped pushing. He held back, freezing and shivering as he fought against what instinct demanded. But something was still wrong. Tears were spilling down the Soldier’s cheeks, mingling with sweat. And then “-Steeeeeve.” A long, broken sound, drawn out as the pain built within.

Something within Steve shattered. “Yeah pal. It’s your Steve. It’s me. I’m here.” The Soldier’s hand clasped Steve’s wrist as tightly as the metal prosthetic would have done.

“Help me.”

There were towels and lotions and water. There was a warm, clean pool and fresh robes and countless sources of soft cotton comfort. But that wasn’t what the Soldier was looking for. That wasn’t what he’d ever have asked for. Remembering what Bucky had needed when he’d pleaded for aid before, Steve lowered himself between the Soldier’s legs, using the movement to slide the other man into a more solid position against one wall rather than wedged in a corner. Wrist still firmly gripped, Steve caught up both of the Soldier’s calves and spread them wider, crowding them close into the brunet’s body.

“Better?”

A nod.

“I’m gonna touch you, ok?”

Another nod, if a more hesitant one. The Soldier gave a strangled sound as Steve’s fingers replaced his own at his core, as featherlight fingertips pressed against tender flesh.

“Yeah, I think you’ve stretched some.” Was Steve guessing his way through this? Of course. Did the Solider need to know that? How would that help? “When you’re ready, when the pain comes again, push into me. Careful and steady. I’ve gotcha.”

“Steve!”

Was it wrong that the embers within him glowed when the Soldier called for him like that? The man was folding towards him, adding a third point of contact between where his forehead found the strength of Steve’s shoulder. Ragged breaths were pumped into the crevice between them, the Soldier still doggedly following the rhythm Steve had set him, in and panted out, out, out, gasped in and puffed out, out, out. And then came a deep moan, the sound rising, the Soldier arching backwards, displaying a neck shining with sweat.

Steve held firm. “Push.”

And the Soldier pushed. His whole body compressed downwards, hunched over the swell of his stomach. An animalistic growl tore through the air.

“Keep going, come on.” There was such force, such effort against Steve’s grip, but he was as solid as his promise, a counterbalance for the Soldier to fight against as his body split open. “You’ve got this.” Steve could see the teardrop of Bucky’s entrance becoming rounder, darker.

“Gnnnnh – haa, ah, ah, ah. Shit! Oww!” The change in the Soldier’s demeanour was instantaneous as he howled with the new sharpness of the pain. His lips were stretching to their limit and his scream reverberated off the mirrored walls off the gym.

“You’re so close, so close darlin’,” Steve was promising as the Soldier flung himself backwards, violent, curving almost in half away from the fierce agony in his core, tossed one way and the other without relief from the demands of his labouring internal muscles.

“Ahhh! Aah – ah. Steve.”

“Push Buck.”

And it was Bucky now, taking over, bearing down, screaming as he strained and fought and pushed, sweat and tears on his cheeks and Steve murmuring about forever in his ears. He was so close now, in the final straights of a day long marathon, struggling and forcing his body to comply with what he needed. Not a single moment of let up or pity or rest, just pushing with everything he had. And he was rewarded. With one gigantic effort, body trembling and locked in a silent shout, the head burst from Bucky’s body.

“Fuuuck!” Bucky yelped at the washback of pain, his nerve-endings shocked into resisting the full brunt of it for a moment only to have it flood back over him.

“There she is. God, Buck.” Steve moved one hand away from Bucky’s shin to cradle the child’s head, creating a barrier between her and the cold of the marble floor it would simply be a crime for her touch. She was so small against his palm. “Take a second, keep on breathing for me.”

But Bucky didn’t stop. He simply threw himself into the next thing that had to be done, forcing himself onwards. Growling and grunting, body shuddering, pushing with all he had, he laboured. Until finally, at last, with a low moan that went on and on and on, undulating and breaking, the shoulders finally freed and Sarah slipped into Steve’s large, suddenly present, hands.

She was here.


	7. Chapter 7

This world was a quiet one. Not the kind of quiet that demanded vigilance, senses straining to detect the next footstep, the next threat, the next target. Not the kind of quiet that promised indeterminate isolation, the emptiness of solitude, days spent in the kind of damp, dank dark that had the ability to permeate guts and bones. It was a gentle, peaceful state that held no expectation of action, no intimation of future violence or gunfire or the risk of a neighbour’s knock, the pressure of bills to pay and medicine to purcahse. As far as Bucky could recall, he had no memory of this kind or quiet, not even any frame of previous reference for it.

The quiet wasn’t the same as silence. No. There were fats and liquids bubbling away beneath the oven’s filaments, alongside the occasional tick of the machine’s internal thermostat. The whisper-silk of nails through hair, of a palm dragging through the astonishingly thick faux fur coverlet his form was wrapped tight within, rubbing kinetic warmth further into his skin until he was all but bathing in it. Only yards away, a fire crackled, radiating heat through a glass pillar and adding a constant, muted backdrop of crackles and pops.

Further still, there was the hum of conversation – deep and distant from out on the balcony – the enormous man, Thor, and one of the robots maintaining some form of continual, pointless back and forth. At the other end of the most enormous L-shaped sofa on which he himself was slumped, Natasha could be detected from the slip of lotion on skin, from the rustle of cloth as she tended to the torn tendons of her ankle, where she’d snapped something essential during the battle. The battle they’d fought for him. It was careless noise, liberally distributed, undoubtedly deliberate, undoubtedly for his benefit. Unnecessary kindness.

And then there were the two nearest noises. Breath. Close. Gentle. Blessedly constant.

How many hours had he attuned himself to one of those sets of lungs, constantly attentive to each inhale and exhale when they were wet and halting, soaked in illness and phlegm, braced for the moment they stopped, convincing himself night after night that this was Steve’s last? And the other – Lord, the other – just detectable, faster than Steve’s – two or three to each of his, interspersed with snuffling noises which had Steve’s broad chest rumbling along in soothing agreement, an instinctive conversation playing out beneath Bucky’s cheek.

Bucky glanced up, allowing his eyes to feast upon the haloed face of his lover and then down to the pink, slightly squirming newborn in his well-defined arms. Everything around them was golden in the firelight; the cream of the walls and luxuriously plush furniture, the dregs of whisky left in tumblers upon the oak table by Natasha’s side, the stretch of skin at Steve’s throat and his hands cradling their daughter. When Bucky tipped his head back, as if by magic a kiss landed upon his lips. Affection, freely dispersed, whenever he wanted it. This had to be a dream. There was no way this bliss would last, not with all the blood he had on his hands. Even this evening was too much. This chrome and honey fantasy was sending him tumbling over the wrong side of his ledger, and the scales would inevitably tip back against him. Devastation. Inevitable.

“Hey.” And there Steve was. Catching him before he spiralled too far out of reach, with a broad palm and determined pressure at the back of his neck, drawing him back into their cosy, parental huddle – Sarah and Steve’s faces just inches away from his own. Like this, how could he blink? With her filling his vision, how could he drift away? What a world they were going to build for her. Away from the dark. Away from the cold and the fight and the flight and the blood.

Those rosebud lips were pursing at the air, making the softest, sucking, smacking sounds. Every now and again, her forehead creased, but she didn’t cry.

“D’you think she’s hungry?” There was a chasm opening up before Bucky now, deep as days. He had never had the chance to live this, the reality. He’d only ever been a carrier, transportation – never this for more than a few snatched hours. Never a real father, taking real responsibility for his child and the full expanse of her needs.

“You’d know better than me,” Steve reminded him. Only one of them has possessed a sprawling set of siblings. Only one of them had spent their childhood changing diapers and lending a hand with feeds between stickball and school. “I think she’ll let you know what she needs. You’re her Dad.”

None of the words were sufficient to reassure Bucky, but so long as Sarah continued to drift in and out of slumber, he was content enough, ready to slip back into that syrupy half-meditative state the blankets and breath and warmth had wooed him into, captivated by the sight of his daughter once more. She looked so different from the others, free of the wax and blood that accompanied the birthing process, circulation settled to leave her peachy with health rather than puce or purple. They’d all had blue eyes, like her, crystalline like the sky they’d never seen. He wondered how many had stayed that way. A brunette, like Bernadette and Rebecca. Only George had been born blond, little Rose and Thomas impossible to tell, born terrifyingly early and entirely bald. A memory struck him, with blinding force, of red skin so translucent he could see the blood, pulsing beneath it with each terrifyingly rapid, precarious heartbeat, of shifting his twins from one arm to the other, desperate to keep them warm but with nothing more than neoprene and titanium to offer them.

The supercharged livewire that was the man Steve called Tony Stark had already offered to make him a new arm. Maybe he could make it warm and soft, like Sarah, so she’d never feel the unforgiving bite of metal against her skin, like Rose and Thomas had in those first, fitful hours of their lives.

Had anyone gazed at them like this? Checking their airways, fretting about their needs, their hunger? Who had given them their first meals, their first baths, their first change? Their second, their third, their fortieth? The same hands, each time, or strangers’? Had they treated them tenderly, like infants, delicate and vulnerable to the forces of the world, or like the weapons they were breeding them to be?

The movement of Steve’s perfectly chisled jaw, tilting upwards, listening to something Bucky couldn’t detect, interrupted his fall once more. “I think that’s the jet coming in now.”

“That’s my cue,” Natasha announced, leveraging herself upright and out of her seat in a single, fluid movement. “Send Clint down when food’s ready would you?”

“Of course.” Steve assured her. “You want a hand on the stairs?” From his angle, Bucky had no chance to glimpse Natasha’s expression, but it must have been truly icy, for only a heartbeat passed before Steve was conceding, “Alright, alright. Sorry I asked.”

Bucky took advantage of the other man’s distraction to bury himself closer into the arm slung about his shoulder, inhaling the scent of fresh-washed skin and laundered cotton, as far as could be from the hovels he’d birthed his previous children within. Clutching to reality, pouring his concentration into his surroundings, determinedly inhaling his partner’s smell and tracking Natasha’s progress down the stairwell towards the ground floor bedrooms – her continued courtesy making it possible. The only other sound was Thor, out on the balcony, laughing heartily at something JARVIS had said through the shell of one of their metal guardians. Seclusion. Permission to whisper, “How polite do we have to be?”

A wave of worry passed over Steve’s brow, sending perfect skin rippling. “You hurting?”

“A strategic retreat may be required,” Bucky informed him. "Not immediately. But soon." As if the metal-rimmed fireplace was a blustering campfire, stoked high to keep back winter’s chill. As if they had a tent and bedrolls waiting for them, under the boughs of some European forest or buried in the muck of a field, which would squelch beneath them when they rolled and roiled together. Once, Steve would have laughed so hard at the phrase his chest would have rocked with it, before he snatched Bucky up and away to catcalls and howls. He would have flushed scarlet and yet still been buoyed by the teasing and banter, hard by the time he’d thrown Bucky down on whatever comforts made up their cots that night. Now, he curled his fingers into the hair near Bucky’s scalp and smiled as soft as pudding.

“I’ll cover for you,” Steve promised, all reassurance and earnestness. Even his words were a gilded comfort. Whatever happened, whenever inevitability rang up his debt, Sarah would have Steve. Bucky knew that. His hands treating her like glass, like spun sugar as he tended to her needs.

Somehow, it made the others’ fates sting worse.

-

When Tony, Sam and Clint whirled their collective way back into the chalet – through the first-floor balcony window of course, thrusters boiling and wings flaring because doors were for cowards and not superheroes – Steve could feel Bucky bracing himself, a carapace of tension snapping up along his spine. He’d promised Bucky a retreat, but they couldn’t escape without what they needed for Sarah. And what they needed for Sarah appeared to be a small mountain of boxes, bags and miscellaneous equipment, a mountain that built over multiple trips and spilled in irregular chaos across every possible exit. The men in charge of assembling said mountain were holding a continuous conversation, calling out to one another, joking and laughing as they tossed toys and fabric to and fro.

The sudden swell of noise breaking into their previous peace was overwhelming. Bucky, who had never been on the receiving end of a Tony Stark shopping spree before, was frozen in place. Similarly startled by the noise, Sarah was beginning to grizzle her objection.

It was the appearance of a human-sized pink teddy bear on the sofa, patted into position by Thor’s enormous, golden cuffed hand, which pushed Bucky to mutter, “What-?”

Steve hooked his elbow closer around his lover’s shoulders, the pressure a reassurance as he leaned down to whisper, “This is how Tony shows affection.” He paused, correcting himself. “Assuages his guilt. Either way. Roll with it. Anything you don’t like will mysteriously fail to make it onto the jet, I swear.”

The flow of new packages was beginning to slow when Clint held up his hands and declared, “We come bearing gifts.” The chipper tone did nothing to ease the tension from his fellow assassin’s shoulders.

“Yes, yes, that’s precisely what we are,” Tony half-shouted as he divested himself of half a dozen pastel-coloured paper bags and began the process of stepping out of his scarlet, golden suit. The mechanics folded themselves away with satisfactorily neat perfection. “I think you’ll find I myself am Melchior, the first of the Three Kings. And I bring you gold, which I hope, Sonny and Cher, you’ll note is the gift with the most consistently appreciating monetary value. Clint, Sam, you’re the other two with the crappier gifts - what's a baby going to do with myrrh, geez Legolas. Thor’s Gabriel, all celestial fire and fury. I guess Nat’s the star.”

Sam snorted. “Unless you’re planning on throwing a bunch of glitter at her next suit, not sure that one’s gonna fly.”

“It’s a compliment,” Tony protested. “Our guiding light. I couldn’t very well make her a sheep, could I? I enjoy possessing intact genitals.”

That seemed to amuse Bucky sufficiently for him to twist upwards in Steve’s lap, asking, “If he calls me Mary, I’m allowed to throw him out of the window, aren’t I?”

“Of course, doll,” Steve assured him, aware he was smirking.

“Wha-” Tony’s hand found his heart, mock outrage and hurt painted across his features. “Such cruelty. And after I got you…” – the billionaire held up a box, squinting at the bright, bubble font splashed across it – “…an Italian leather changing bag with detachable stroller clips and deluxe stuffed mat, all in black to match your tac suit. Murder threats when I’ve invested in this… top of the line multi-motion soothing rocker that plays both nature sounds _and_ lullabies while mimicking the swaying movements of a mothe-father’s hips to get your tiny child off to sleep. Y’know I had to sign a woman’s chest to get her to open up the store this late to get you such a delight?”

Bucky was levering himself upwards as Tony rambled about the versatility of the rocker, and how he was pretty sure he could make it compatible with JARVIS to get it to play whatever music they wanted because Mozart had been shown to aid cerebral development, and what about setting it up to read foreign language books for children, did they want French or Cantonese? “I wanna get her out of this towel into something softer. Gimme.”

Careful, making sure not to jostle her, Steve slid Sarah into the crook of his lover’s arm. “You got her?”

“Yeah, I got her.” Something seemed to happen to Bucky’s voice when he spoke about Sarah. It deepened and mellowed in a way Steve had never heard before the war. In the handful of hours since Bucky had pushed that child into Steve’s hands, he’d hardly taken his eyes from her. And when he had her in his arms, he just seemed _whole._ Watching how she nuzzled automatically into Bucky’s warmth, seeking his comfort, how her quiet noises faded away to nothing, how he so naturally supported her and swaddled her… How Tony thought Natasha was the guiding star was a mystery, when the two of them were blazing bright in the middle of the living room.

Sam’s voice broke the spell, as he decanted package after package before the sofa. “Babygros… formula… diapers… socks… Lil’ hand-knitted booties, about three dozen creams and powders, vitamins… About half a field of cotton wool. A whole bushel of softness, blankets and hooded towels and shit.”

The bags in Sam’s grip were bulging, overstuffed, but much less intimidating than the heap of cardboard cubes Tony was slicing open. He’d be assembling pushchairs and changing tables for hours. Bucky, meanwhile, was flicking his gaze from the bags to the baby and back again, as if they were the most daunting thing he’d ever seen. Cautious, Steve asked, “Buck?”

A pale face snapped up. “I’ve – um. Can you pick something out for her?”

Steve scooted over to the bundles. Movement was easier now, the serum sealing up his ribs, the bullet extracted, the wound scabbed. But ‘The Three Kings’ were grazed and bruised, shuffling and moving with exaggerated care even as Thor and Tony settled in to unpack, sort and fold the trio's prizes and Sam hobbled into the kitchen to check on the lasagne. The last thing they’d needed in the wake of an unexpected battle was to shlep out into town to fetch muslins and baby hats. Even though Bucky and Sarah were waiting for him, Steve took a moment to say, “Thank you guys. This is… a lot. And I’m grateful.”

“No problem,” Clint chirped, his hands now empty as he wandered towards Bucky. The brunet didn’t flinch, but he did hunch his shoulders over the child in his arm, raptor-like in defence of his prey. The tender hold he had on Sarah, however, did not change. “Heads up, you’re going to get super-paranoid about the temperature of her bathwater. There’s no logic to it, it’s just a thing that happens to new parents, like their brains convince them their hands have forgotten how to feel things properly. There’s a thing in there, looks like a duck, changes colour as the water heats up, you’re gonna love it.” Pulling back, he turned his attention to Steve, who was passing bundles of diapers from one hand to the other, uncomprehending. “She’s pretty little Cap, I reckon you want Size 0s.”

“Little?” That dragged Bucky’s gaze up to Clint, somehow making him appear even more like an eagle on the prowl.

“Nothing to worry about new Papa,” Clint promised, squeezing the meat of his fellow assassin’s shoulder. “She’ll grow like a weed. She’ll be double that size before you’ve decided on a middle name.”

It was a tense moment. The room held its breath as Bucky stilled, the casual nickname and familiar touch unpredictable dominos, equally liable to wreak destruction or create something beautiful. Yet Bucky merely frowned. “You’ve got kids?”

With a grin, Clint confessed, “Two. Let’s get breakfast in the morning. I’ll trade you tales of my early parenting mishaps for your stories of Natasha when she was all awkward and foal-like.”

“Deal.”

By the time Clint had made his way to the top of the stairs, Steve had managed to dig out a green cotton Babygro, soft as lambswool, in addition to an appropriately-sized diaper. He passed them over to his lover – only to stare as Bucky caught up the blanket they’d been huddled under with his teeth, dragging it to cover the seat. Steve froze, uncertain as to what was transpiring, but when Bucky knelt on the ground to hustle Sarah into the dip between two seat cushions one-handed, the younger man lunged forwards.

“Here, let me-”

“I’ve got it.” Somehow, Bucky’s voice still managed to hold those tranquil notes while being ridged with warning. His spine was set against the heat of multiple eyes upon him.

Steve reared away at the dismissal and forced himself to hold back, just watching as Bucky unfolded the towel they’d wound Sarah up in for lack of anything more appropriate. He sat on his hands, winching them between his knees as Bucky eased the infant all the way out of the cloth, until she was naked and dangling against his arm. But when it came to pulling on a diaper, Bucky’s sure movements paused. The conundrum of how to lift the infant’s legs and slide the absorbent cloth beneath her simultaneously with just one hand had him hesitating.

“Bucky I-”

“Steve!” Sam’s interruption, tossed like a grenade the conversation, jolted the blond to attention. “I need your help over here. I’m not asking Thor to lay the table when we’re having lasagne. Not after last time.”

With the spirit of Sarah Rogers laying heavily over the room, there was no way her son could resist such a request for aid with hospitality. He dragged himself over to the kitchen counter, positioning himself at the chopping board Sam indicated him towards. Yet his eyes were still on Bucky, watching as the brunet used his teeth once more to position the plastic/cloth/strap contraption to his requirements. Sam placed his hands on Steve’s hips to angle him towards a large pile of washed lettuce and slotted a knife into his palm. Steve’s fist tightened on the implement so tightly it almost snapped in half.

Bucky didn’t once glance back at his lover. Instead, he turned, with deliberate slowness, towards Tony. “Stark?”

“Terminator?”

“Can you prioritise that rocking chair thing over the stroller? I think I can… it’ll make feeding her easier if she’s sitting up, strapped in. I don’t think… Without it, it’s gonna be…”

“No problemo.” Tony tossed down a multi-coloured mobile on a stick and tore into the next box over.

Meanwhile, Bucky laid out the clothing on one part of the sofa, spreading it open, before transplanting Sarah on top of it, making it easier to slide each of her limbs into the minty-coloured fabric Steve had chosen for her. The newborn was grumbling at the excess of movement her father was requiring of her, and – in earshot of them all – Bucky began murmuring, “Yeah, I know, Papa’s the worst isn’t he? Making sure you’re all cosy and warm? I know, I know. We’re almost done sweetheart.”

Reluctantly, Steve began to run his knife through the watery leaves in front of him, listening in as Tony pondered, “I wonder if there’s an optimum angle for feeding. I could make that a default setting, there’s got to be some data out there on that.”

“Hmm, is there an optimum angle for feeding you Sarah?” Bucky continued to chatter along. “I bet there’s an optimum angle for getting a hat on your little head, that’s going to be a fun challenge isn’t it? I reckon we can manage though, you and I.”

“J, project this schematic to scale for me and run a search on infant digestion,” Tony demanded from his earpiece.

“What is the purpose of this?” Thor asked, holding what could only be a highly over-complicated breast pump up to his eye.

Bucky laughed aloud as he sorted through half a department store for what he deemed to be acceptable headwear.

Nudging at Steve’s hand, which was hovering over a badly-rent romaine as the blonde stared at the scene unfolding just a few feet away, Sam muttered, “See that? Your boy’s got this. Hand me that bowl of tomatoes.”

“Yeah, yeah he does,” Steve sighed. There was a warmth spreading through him that had nothing to do with the oven opening at his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for being late to post this. Please note the new tags for the next chapter.


	8. Chapter 8

It was just the two of them. The two of them and their tiny third, tucked and swaddled in the bottom drawer of the dresser by the bed, the two boys raised in the 1920s having had visceral objections to the number of complex, clinical plastic attachments that accompanied Tony’s proposed cot.

Now, alone with the other, they were permitted to stare, to tangle themselves together and drink the other in, without pain or judgement getting in the way. Their excuse for retreat might have been tiredness but Steve couldn’t shut his eyes.

“You should sleep,” Steve said, in direct contradiction of his own stubbornness as he ran his thumb across a curving cheekbone just inches from his own, just on the limit of where Bucky’s features would blur if they leaned any closer.

“In a bit,” Bucky demurred, his eyelids drooping a little but not closing. “I’m fine.” And, at least physically, he was. The serum had been sealing and soothing its way through his body too, leaving only a bone-deep ache as a reminder of what his body had experienced, a tenderness which would be gone by morning. Even his shoulder was well on its way to what passed for normality, the bandage peeled away to reveal shiny, healthy new skin hardly marked by the surgery the Italians had undertaken to remove the metal arm. Only the mess of decades’ old scar tissue, webbed and rough across his chest, scars Steve had hardly glanced at though Bucky had lain in his arms, bare-skinned, for almost an hour. “We should talk.”

Every muscle in Steve’s body was loose in a way he wasn’t sure they had been since the ice. He smiled as he spoke, at ease. “What d’you wanna talk about?”

Faced with that bright white, dazzling grin, even Bucky stayed soft and curled close. “I’m not – I’ve been getting better. Remembering. The last few months, while I… But. I slip. I lose time. I have nightmares and flashbacks. Groups can be – you saw me in the shower. I’ve not – it’s like I’m in pieces Steve. They’re jagged and sharp and they might hurt you or – I don’t know if I’ll ever get all of those pieces back.” The words tumbled out into the dim light of the room, a whispered confession. But if Bucky’s intention had been to drive space between them, if he had even feared it, Steve was there to prove him wrong. Smile dimmed but encouraging. Thumb still soothing at his cheek. Legs still tangled, foot running up and down. “You should – you should know that if we’re picking up where we left off. And – we should talk about whether that’s what we’re doing, picking up, because – the elevator, and here – I’m not gonna bind you to a choice you made in the heat of the moment.”

“The heat of the moment?” Steve repeated, incredulous. He regretted his tone, and the half-snort that accompanied it, immediately as Bucky’s uncertainty became a scowl. “Bucky, I chased you for months. That’s a full on wildfire, not a flash in the pan. I tossed through the corpses you left behind on four continents, looking for clues. You knew that – you knew I was coming for you when the Gendarmerie took you, you all but gave yourself up to them. There’s nothing I want more than to pick up with you again.“

“Please, Steve. Think about it. You’ve always just… charged on in without engaging that head of yours. I’m trying to – give you an out here,” Bucky whispered.

“Don’t want one, don’t need one. I want you.” He was gripping Bucky tighter now, grasp solid as it should have been on that Austrian railtrack, as it should have been on that Cleveland roadside. “You never gave a shit about my jagged edges, all the ways that wound up kid with a chip on his shoulder was broken. Never mind caring – you told me you _loved_ them. I’m still-” Steve could feel his own control over his emotions slipping away, his one shot at peace at risk of plummeting into the abyss once more. How many people got third chances? How cruel would fate have to be to snatch this away again? “Please Buck. This? You? A family? Please darlin’, can’t we have this? Can’t you let us – don’t take it, don’t go.”

Something crumpled inside Bucky then, and he was crossing the inch-long distance between them to find Steve’s lips with his own, catching them up in a determined kiss. Silencing the flow of doubt and questions. Steve felt his once-lover’s leg curl tighter around his, hand gripping tight at the back of his neck, his whole body as feverish, as determined to clutch and to claim as his mouth. There was no choice but to surrender to it, and when Bucky drew away, he was decisive. “So we do this.”

Steve nodded, smile firmly back in place. “We do.” Before he could say anything more, Bucky was cutting him off again, eager to finish what he’d started.

“And Sarah? You’ll – you don’t have to. But if there’s a chance you could learn to love her too – I know, you never asked, we never even talked about it – but I want her to have you, there for her.”

“Bucky, it’s your choice. And it’s a huge one. But if you wanna ask me to raise her with you-?”

“That is what I’m asking,” Bucky confirmed. He laughed, softly, the way he did when he realised just how absurd the world truly was. “I want you to be her Dad.”

“Her Dad.” Steve had never tested that word out before, not in relation to himself. Knowing who he was, what he liked, who he liked, in combination with the low likelihood of a dame falling for him? Children had been impossible from the moment he’d told Bucky he loved him, coiled with fear and drunk on bitter liquor in a Brooklyn alleyway. It tasted right. “Well – we’d have to go back to that conversation about making an honest man out of you. But yes. It’d be an honour.”

“God, you’re a sap.” The smirk on Bucky’s lips was, perhaps, a little wobbly, but it quickly hardened into something more predatory as he swung his weight up and over until he was straddling Steve’s legs.

“I thought we were talking,” Steve commented, even as Bucky tugged, impatiently, at his shirt.

“Yeah, I was pretty much done.”

A laugh on his lips, Steve surged upwards, tearing his sleepshirt off in one motion – if only to see the flicker of satisfaction on the brunet’s lips when his chest was revealed – before bringing his and Bucky’s bodies together in the next. The serum might have doused the pain and knitted together torn up flesh, but there was still a retained stomach between them, as if Bucky was several months along. Steve couldn’t help but drop his fingers to it, watching as a pleased shiver ran up his partner’s spine. “You sure Buck?”

As Steve’s broad hands cupped his belly, trailed touch up and down his torso, as his thumb brushed across his protruding bellybutton, Bucky’s eyes drifted closed, the better to absorb sensation. Experimentally, he rocked in Steve’s lap. “Mmm… Everything’s pretty sensitive. You’re gonna have to be real sweet with me.” He opened silver eyes long enough to wink.

Conscious of the baby sleeping just a few feet away, Steve kept his responding chuckle quiet. “Alright pal. I can do that.” There were miles of skin available to him. Far more than he had once had at his mercy. As Steve lowered his mouth to lick up Bucky’s neck – revelling in how Bucky arched with hyper-responsiveness – he found that stubble-coated neck broader, thicker than before. When he buried kisses against the meat of Bucky’s collarbone, there were entire rolls of additional flesh there for him to pull between his teeth and suck on, drawing the blood to the surface and sending Bucky squirming in his lap. At their angle, he couldn’t be getting more than grazing pressure on his cock through the quadruple cotton layers of underwear and pants – but it wasn’t stopping him from trying, nor stopping him from whining for more.

“Touch me, doll, c’mooon.”

“What d’you think I’ve been doin’?” Steve asked, tweaking at Bucky’s bellybutton.

“Mff – Steve!”

“I know what you want darlin’. I’ve got you.”

Bucky was a vision. Pale and shining in the lamplight. Muscles for days. Movement constant, tossing his head back and glorying in sensation as touches skittered across his belly and a hot mouth tasted its way across his chest, getting closer and closer to where he wanted it with agonising, maple-heavy slowness. Steve’s hand, solid and strong at his back, was a constant anchor. Never letting him fall. Never letting him squirm further away than he wanted him. Bucky needed that support more than ever when Steve came up on his knees, creating the leverage to slide his hand into Bucky’s pants, just as he circled a pebbled nipple with his tongue.

Little warning cries of “Aaah- aah!” were dripping from Bucky’s lips as Steve teased and stroked, millimetres from tangled hubs of nerve endings that were throbbing with the need to be touched, cock and chest somehow independent of the whole. Linked, yes but autonomous, living spheres of smouldering arousal. Then a flare of panic rippled between them, Bucky plummeting back to Earth. “Not inside!” he gasped.

“Okay.” Steve hadn’t been close to being inside Bucky, but he withdrew his touch all the same, proving he was worthy of trust. He whipped his hand out of Bucky’s pants and landed on his hip, thumb rubbing in constant motion against the skin marked with purple stretch marks there. But he wasn’t about to abandon the swell of Bucky’s thick chest or the shudders of pleasure that rippled through the older man as his tongue swirled over the nipple’s edges, or the choked off moan when Steve’s mouth engulfed it. Bucky’s hand tangled in Steve’s hair, where the blond strands trailed against the nape of his neck, tightening on them as Steve laved and swirled and – “oh God” – nipped at an ever-reddening nub.

The effect his touch was having was unmistakable. Bucky was sinking back down fast after his surge of alarm, lost in the touch, his eyes tightly closed, his lips plump and bitten, hanging open, hair flowing down his back in waves.

Glancing up, under heavily lidded eyes, Steve found himself shuddering. Joy and fear crashed within him. Theirs was a tenuous reconnection, one he was planning on taking exquisite care of. He nipped his way back up to Bucky’s jugular, taking care to avoid heavy scarring and leaving a line of blossoming flesh in his wake. With a tug at the brunet’s earlobe, Steve whispered, “Don’t drift from me Buck.”

“I’m not, I’m not. Darlin’ - please,” whimpered Bucky in response. Long minutes of attention had left Bucky’s nipples hard and slick, shining almost scarlet in the shadows. When Steve’s ever-questing thumb pinched just so, he moaned, cracked and wrecked whipper-snap fast.

“Oh, you really are that sensitive hmm?”

Steve claimed himself a kiss, winching his lover close, all lips and tongue and stuttered breath. It did nothing but wind Bucky up further, the man squirming and rolling, his voice a constant, whispering record of “Steve, Steve, Steve-hhah, I said you can touch me, touch me Steve, Steve pl-aah- please!” whenever his mouth wasn’t full. Satisfaction growled like a contented beast nestled in Steve’s abdomen, at the sound of his name, at the idea only he could give Bucky what he needed, at how easily Bucky parsed out trust to him.

“I told you, I got you,” Steve promised him. Carefully, he bent, laying his lover out on those deep, luxuriously crisp sheets and – watching carefully should Bucky show any hint of changing his mind – slid both pants and underwear down and off him.

Now there was a sight. Bucky Barnes in his bed, covered in his marks, and barely able to contain himself. Cock so hard and need so profound it was red and drooling against the swell of his stomach. Kneeling tall above him, Steve could cast his gaze down towards Sarah, see her shift, cosy and deep asleep in the drawer below. He knew better than anyone a single day could change everything and yet…

“Fuuuhck,” came the desperate moan, breaking the blond out of his reverie. In his moment’s distraction, Bucky’s hand had made its way down to his cock, squeezing it, tugging it, coaxing spurts of pre-come to life. His hair was in disarray across the pillow, and he was looking straight up at Steve. Challenging him. Daring him to act with silver eyes blown black.

“Brat,” Steve muttered fondly before flattening himself to take the head of Bucky’s cock into his mouth. The action was enough to nudge the brunet’s hand away, have it transferring to his neck, clenching involuntarily as Steve suckled that sensitive tip, swirling his tongue, making it pointed and dipping deep.

The skin beneath Steve’s hands now was dewy with sweat, Bucky making small, needy noises as bitterness burst over Steve tongue in waves. No force on Earth could prevent Steve from humming in satisfaction at that taste, and the reaction from Bucky to that hum… Christ, like a bolt of lightning had crackled up his spine. He cried aloud.

“Hush, hush,” soothed Steve, sliding up his lover’s body to swallow his noises. “I like your sweet sounds but you can’t wake our girl.” Diverted, Bucky kissed back, frenzied, nipping at the blond’s bottom lip, pulling at it with his teeth just as he used to when he was attempting to get a rise out of Steve. He didn’t need to. Steve’s arousal was its own, persistent presence, his cock aching even as the new position allowed him to align their lengths, making Bucky jerk and gasp beneath him. Grinding and hard and heated.

Bucky’s trembling fingers found Steve’s cheek. “Please - shit, please!” He pressed tender, lingering kisses against the side of Steve’s mouth, against his jaw, his neck. “Please don’t make me wait.”

Letting out a low groan, Steve locked his arms above Bucky’s head, giving in to the desire to press down, to grind their erections together, to feel the flare of heat each undulation granted him.

“Stevie, Stevie, sweetheart, please!”

How prettily he begged. What that begging did to Steve… But he remembered exactly how petty Bucky could be if he pushed just a little bit further. And it was that memory which had Steve lifting away and slotting his fingers back between their bodies. The broad pads of his fingers slid through dripping, puffy folds. Bucky’s entire body bowed, immediately, and he muffled a whine into the crook of Steve’s neck, the sound sinking through his skin.

“Mm mmhmm, there we go,” approved the blond, grazing his fingers up and down, up and down, a featherlight dance. “I’d missed hearing that.”

Bucky’s breath was nothing more than a staccato thing, following the journey of Steve’s fingers, and his attention centred on the hypersensitive nerve endings Steve was playing as his own personal instrument. “Christ, Christ – ahaahh.” His lower body rose as Steve’s fingers did, his hips unconsciously following the movement, spinning out each moment of pressure and pleasure. Steve allowed the arousal to build, higher and higher, with endless, circling touches, skipping away and dancing back again, coaxing the embers of pleasure hotter and hotter, until every touch had mewls spilling from Bucky’s lips and sent his entire body jerking.

When Bucky was strung out and trembling, Steve drew back and allowed himself to taste. To trail his tongue up shivering thighs and over tender flesh. To lick and press and suck until Bucky’s legs were clamping over his head. Bucky was vibrating with tension, slamming his hand over his mouth to quiet his moans, crushing his crotch as firmly into the constant, wet pressure of Steve’s mouth as he could. Steve – helplessly grinding his own erection into the mattress beneath him – rose with him, gripping his hips and following close as Bucky jolted and shook and finally sobbed.

A glance upwards revealed the first tear glistening on Bucky’s cheek.

Grinning, Steve broke away, just to hear the fractured “No!” become a high whine of relief as he descended on Bucky’s cock, swallowing him down. His palm replaced his tongue. It took just moments for the full-body spasm to signal Bucky’s release.

Steve worked his lover through it, sucking and stroking, luxuriating in every moment and every quiver and twitch of uncontrollable limbs, lost in a sensation that sinking body deserved to have last as long as he could physically stand. The tears were streaming now, as the pleasure merged into something sharper and more delicious, Bucky’s spine in constant flex as he was deluged with the _toomuchdon’tstoptoomuch_ sensation, fist thumping against the sheets as he rode and bucked and fought back screams.

That sweating, sobbing, spasming sight was enough to push Steve over the edge, and he sucked all the harder in instinctive reaction as his hips jackhammered against the sheets.

“Steve!”

He hardly made out the cry as he rode the wash of pleasure through his veins. Bucky’s cock was heavy in his mouth and he didn’t want to let it go, pressing on the curve of the brunet’s stomach to cling on. Bucky’s whines jumped another octave as he strained, trembling, overwhelmed, overstimulated, vibrating and weeping until he pulsed once more down Steve’s throat.

Panting, satisfied at last, Steve finally crawled back up the length of Bucky’s body to run his tongue along his thrumming bottom lip. His eyes feasted upon the sight of Bucky, blissed out, flushed and broken, the occasional aftershock still running through him and stealing his breath.

“Christ alive,” Bucky groaned up at Steve, throwing his arm around muscular, golden shoulders – half to hold him close and half to ensure he didn’t duck back down below belt level. “You don’t have to make up all seventy years in one night. We just had a whole conversation about how I’m gonna stick around on, you know, a long-term basis.”

“What? You didn’t enjoy it?” Steve demanded, the evidence to the contrary still a fully identifiable taste at the back of his throat.

“Yeah, yeah. Clean up and come cuddle. I had a baby today and you had a prisonbreak and got shot. S’bedtime,” Bucky scolded, sending Steve on his way with a slap, muffled by layers of pants and underwear.

Steve scampered to obey, giving himself one glance backwards to see Bucky rolling over to stare down at his slumbering daughter. Their slumbering daughter.

-

Steve woke abruptly, to a baby’s cry, the edge of steel at his throat, and a weight upon his chest. When his eyes snapped open, he was unsurprised to find the shadowed face of the Soldier hanging over him in the dark, hair hanging in curtains as he pinned Steve to the bed with the full force of his bulk and what Steve could only assume was a knife. It was too far down his throat to tell for certain, but he was pretty sure said knife was both large and sharp.

Sarah’s cries were high and whining, a whinging protest in the dark – but not so loud that the noise would wake their neighbours just yet, not so constant that her demands had to be met with urgency. It meant Steve could take his time, inhale and steady himself, to study the man holding him down.

It was strange. When Bucky inhabited this form, somehow the ravages of the last months slipped away. His smiles filled out the lines on his forehead, the hollow sacks of his cheeks. The light of his humour brightened grey skin. Marks of fatigue and hunger were still present, of course they were, but life still outshone them. When this man took over, however, things were different. That vitality was gone and it wasn’t just the last eight months of subterfuge that were on show. All those years of torture returned, the trauma, the exhaustion, all engrained so deep into his skin the shadows doubled.

The Soldier was silent, waiting – and Steve was never one to disappoint. “Should I call you Bucky? Or would you prefer something else?” When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple grazed sharpened steel. Where - had Bucky hidden a knife in their bed? Or had the Soldier slipped in sometime before they slept?

A gruff sound was his only response.

“I know… I know you are Bucky, but you’re not as well. I think you’ve been keeping him safe, haven’t you? Tucking him away in the corner of that head you share, taking all the hurt. You’ve been his shield huh?” There was no reaction, no sign of whether he was even in the realm of accuracy. So Steve plunged onwards. “You don’t need to do that anymore. You don’t have to go – but you can stand down now. He’s safe now, there’s not gonna be any more hurt. Not for either of you.”

The Solider tossed a glance across at the child making fretful noises below them, a glance Steve was almost certain was anxious.

“No more hurt for Sarah either,” Steve promised.

“Fault.” The growl was so guttural, it took a moment for Steve to define it – a moment protracted by the added distraction of the knife pressing harder against his throat.

“No, Sarah doesn’t have a fault. I think she’s due a feed, that’s all. It’s been a few hours and babies get hungry real fast.” Steve was doing his best to remain as neutral as possible, lax and non-threatening beneath the Soldier’s thighs. Intellectually, he didn’t really believe Bucky or the Soldier inhabiting his body would hurt him, but convincing his body not to spring into fight-or-flight mode was not entirely simple. “I think she’d feel good about you picking her up, holding her.”

The Soldier glared, hard and stony, down at Steve, waiting for the trick to resolve. When Steve just lay there, and Sarah began to cry all the louder, the man twisted off him and crouched by the drawer, scooping the baby up, blankets and all. There was that eagle-like look, back again, though this time the wings were raised against Steve.

Carefully, Steve levered himself upwards, braced for any reaction and receiving none. “I’ll make her up a bottle if you want?”

-

Natasha was waiting for him upstairs, feet dangling off the cupboard side from where she perched on the countertop, next to an already warming bottle-maker that looked bafflingly like a coffee machine. Assassins lurked so regularly around the Tower that Steve didn’t jump, just tripped a little and bounced off the dining table.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he ventured as he padded closer, veering further away from any other aggressive stationery furniture.

“Ankle’s a bitch,” Natasha confirmed. She nodded at the glowing bottle-maker, where the light was turning increasingly green as the temperature of the liquid rose. “This thing is nifty. Clint’s got an eye for baby gadgets apparently. It’s pretty hot. His know-how, not the milk. That’ll be perfectly warmed, obviously. 21st century’s pretty good, huh?”

“I can’t say I was well versed in the baby-survival equipment of the 1940s, so I will take the boons of this century for granted like everyone else,” admitted Steve, still approaching the contraption with some caution as it flashed in a manner he assumed indicated completion. “You know, I’m sorry about your leg. And grateful to you. For following my play even when I was losing my mind, and your willingness to put yourself between Bucky and HYRDA.”

“You’d do the same for any of us,” replied Natasha, easy and relaxed, pulling the bottle out of the warmer and pressing it into Steve’s hands. “Also I reckon I can make hot chocolate in this thing too. Yay gadgets.”

Steve snorted a laugh as he checked the temperature of the milk against the inside of his wrist. “I’m serious. Thank you.”

Natasha’s face was in shadow as she said, “We all had someone bring us out of the cold. In his case it was literal and figurative. Honestly, I’m pleased to have the chance to pay it forwards. Just… don’t ask me to babysit, I’m not that pleased.” She began to rifle through the cupboards, looking for the cocoa powder they definitely possessed because this was a Pepper Potts-organised safehouse. “And you should make sure James takes up Clint’s offer of breakfast. If you’re looking for an out, there’s a farmhouse about two miles down from his that’s on the market. I think you two would like it.”

Leaning in close, Steve reached into a shelf high about the Widow’s head, extracting the tin she was looking for and passing it over. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“It has a restored cow barn, period features, and a sunroom.”

Steve began to back away before Natasha could reveal that Missouri real estate agent was one of her covers. “I should get this down there.”

Natasha was contentedly spooning out powder into two mugs, and merely waved him goodnight a second time.

-

Secreted in the furthest corner of the room, cross-legged on their bed, the Soldier followed Steve’s entry into the room with a flinty-eyed stare. Sarah was tucked in his arm, snuffling but quiet. The baby’s duckling-spangled lilac blankets detracted somewhat from the threatening aura the world’s most mysterious assassin tended to exude, as did the constant, gentle rocking sway he was adopting. It was the most innately natural, soothing movement. Did he even know that he was doing it, Steve wondered?

“Is it alright if I come closer? I have her bottle,” Steve informed him, pausing close to the doorway with his hands automatically out in front of himself in a gesture of surrender.

“You’re Steve,” came the grunt in response.

“I am Steve,” the blonde confirmed, grin wide as he did his best to stop himself from skipping across the room towards the centre of gravity in his life, holding himself still until he had explicit permission to approach. “Your Steve. I mean – I’m your Steve, not you are S-”

The Soldier huffed, interrupting. “I called for you. And you were there.”

Two full sentences! Was it possible everything could slot together? Those jagged pieces Bucky had fretted so much about interlocking with their brothers and sisters, rubbing the sharpness away? “Yeah. I’m sorry I was so late pal. I’m gonna try real hard to be there on time from now on when you need me to be. You or Bucky or Sarah. Whenever you need me, ok?”

That seemed to be too foreign a concept, meeting only expressionless silence, so Steve forged onwards.

“Sarah needs this bottle now right?”

That’s when something close to worry crossed the Soldier’s face. He glanced from the bottle, to Sarah and back again, mutter rapid. “I have a fault. Reporting Category 12 Fault. Weapon missing. Require new Weapon installation as matter of urgency.”

Steve couldn’t help a scowl. “Nope. I mean, if you’re telling me you want a new arm – no problem, Tony’s already doodling schematics. But that didn’t stop Bucky feeding your daughter tonight, it’s not going to stop you either. Here.” Confidently, as if the wrong move had zero chance of triggering a murderous rampage, Steve stepped forwards. He dropped his gaze from the Soldier and his child to gather up the pillows from across the bed and the floor – was this why this century had so many extraneous pillows? That felt oddly specific – to pile on the Soldier’s lap. The Soldier automatically lifted his arm to allow Steve to create a comfortable yet tilted tower on the other side of his torso. “Pop her on there. Close to your skin, like she is now. She’s spent nine months listening to your heartbeat, she likes being all tucked up next to it again when she feeds.”

Hesitantly, the Soldier followed his direction, carefully testing Sarah’s weight against the sturdiness of the feather structure, adjusting it to his liking, before committing her to it and finally reaching for the bottle. Steve’s fingers brushed the Soldier’s as he transferred the warm plastic into his grip. The Soldier still appeared deeply perturbed when Sarah accepted the bottle’s teat, guzzling greedily from it just as reflex demanded.

Steve attempted to conceal a smile as he lingered on the bed, watching her feed. He was ingratiated well into the Soldier’s personal space and he had no desire to abandon it without instruction to the contrary. Sarah’s eyes had closed, perhaps in concentration, perhaps in contentment, and he let that same quiet restfulness wash over him too. Soft and cautious, he offered, “I don’t know how much you listen in on. When Bucky’s in the driver’s seat. But he asked me earlier if I’d be Sarah’s Dad, alongside you. The two of you. I’d really like you to be ok with that too.” There was little reaction in return, and Steve found himself smiling. “At the very least, it’ll let you get some rest.”

That had the Soldier sitting up straighter, curving his shoulders more defiantly over the small form of his daughter. “Rest period not required. Mission incomplete.”

“You still have a mission?” Steve repeated. “I thought…”

“Phase 1 and 2 complete. Phase 3 to 8 still in progress.” Each syllable was monotone and blunt.

“Phase 3 to 8?” The blond was conscious of sounding too much like a Dictaphone but had rarely been able to help himself.

Being looked at like a fool by the Winter Soldier was not the most comfortable experience. Hairs rose along the back of Steve’s neck. “Phase 1 and 2 acquisition complete. Phase 3: Rose. Phase 4: Thomas. Phase 5: Bernadette. Phase 6: George. Phase 7: Rebecca. Rest permissible on mission completion.”

Had Steve been holding anything, he would have dropped it. He’d been too caught up in the idea of his first child, he hadn’t even considered that it was Bucky’s sixth. “You’ve been looking for them? The HYDRA bases, the ransacking – that’s why you’ve been hunting them down?”

The Soldier persisted. “The mission. You’ll assist?”

Steve had no hesitation. He never would when it came to this man. “Yeah. Yeah I’ll assist. I’ll help, we all will. We’ll get your babies back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kind comments and kudos. I read them all and am super grateful.


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